Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Feature interview with Prof. Bruce Pardy, Queen's University Faculty of Law

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, a feature interview with a civil liberties-oriented law professor

00:00:05.420 in Canada. I know you think I've just described a unicorn. Do they even exist? Is it one in a

00:00:11.140 million? It's like those albino rhinoceroses that are just so rare. Well, I'm talking about

00:00:17.040 Bruce Pardee, Queen's University lawyer. He's going to talk to us for about half an hour about

00:00:23.240 the state of play, civil liberties in the world. That's ahead. Before I get to that, let me invite

00:00:28.160 you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. I think I told you, we're giving away for free.

00:00:32.860 Go to rebelnewsplus.com, rebelnewsplus.com, and enter the promo code ELECTION, and you can get a free

00:00:41.260 subscription. Now, when the free subscription's over, I think it's for a month, we'll invite you

00:00:45.260 to pay eight bucks a month, and we hope that you'll like it enough that you'll be happy to do so.

00:00:49.420 So that's just at rebelnewsplus.com, code word, ELECTION. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:58.160 Tonight, a feature interview with law professor Bruce Pardee. It's September 2nd, and this is

00:01:15.620 The Ezra Levant Show. Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:01:22.640 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the

00:01:28.260 government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:37.380 I believe we're in the worst civil liberties crisis in Canadian history. I've made my case to

00:01:41.460 you on that before. This is worse than the October crisis, the FLQ crisis in Quebec. Of course,

00:01:47.240 that province was put under martial law, but it was just for a matter of weeks, and it was just

00:01:51.520 one place, and it was just because there were bombs going off in mailboxes and people being kidnapped

00:01:56.960 and murdered by an actual terrorist group. That was bad, but it was limited in time and scope.

00:02:04.120 Of course, the Japanese internment was bad, too, but it was limited, again, to one group of people.

00:02:09.340 You can disagree with it. I do disagree with judging people based on race, but there was a

00:02:14.160 rationale that was particularly linked to the war, and it was just that group, and just for that period

00:02:20.420 of time. What I'm talking about in Canada now is a lockdown, a house arrest, a discrimination against

00:02:27.520 people of all backgrounds for any reason or no reason using public health as the excuse. So it covers

00:02:34.420 everyone in Quebec. It covers everyone who is Japanese-Canadian and everyone else, too.

00:02:39.720 There's no end in sight, and it takes more and more of our powers away. Even in Japanese internment,

00:02:45.880 as unfair and illegal as it was, people could still leave their houses. It was just basically an ethnic 0.96

00:02:51.360 ghetto. They were watched in a kind of prison, but it's not as much of a prison as being in place during

00:02:57.760 the lockdowns that we've had. I fear that things are going to get much worse. We talk about grievances

00:03:03.800 and misconduct of the past of Aboriginal residential schools. I agree there are things wrong with people 1.00

00:03:12.360 being ripped away from their parents. I absolutely agree that family units are important, and I put it

00:03:18.400 to you that we can see cases already of kids being removed from parents in custody disputes because

00:03:25.120 one parent is not for the vaccine and the other is. People are losing their jobs. They're losing their

00:03:30.820 place to live. I put it to you that we are in the worst civil liberties crisis in Canadian history.

00:03:38.700 The former U.S. Attorney General said this COVID lockdown crisis was the worst civil liberties event in

00:03:44.120 American history since slavery. And I would agree that that is the only thing in the North American 0.95

00:03:50.660 continent that trumps what we're going through now. Can you deny it? Well, I think that most lawyers,

00:03:57.360 civil libertarians, law professors, and judges have been absent in the last 18 months, and it's terrible.

00:04:03.600 But today we have a feature interview with one law professor willing to talk about it and who believes

00:04:09.320 that civil liberties are important. His name is Bruce Pardy. He's a professor at Queen's University,

00:04:14.860 and I had the pleasure of sitting down with him for half an hour. Here's that feature interview today.

00:04:32.080 Folks, please, the facts are clear. The vaccine is the best tool we have to keep people safe.

00:04:39.320 Keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed and avoid further lockdowns. And that's why we're adopting an

00:04:46.820 enhanced vaccine certificate. We'll hear from Minister Elliott and Dr. Moore shortly. But after

00:04:53.140 in-depth discussions with our medical experts, we've landed on a vaccine certificate policy that is

00:04:59.300 based on evidence and best advice. It's a policy with the following key principles. Vaccinations will be

00:05:07.720 mandatory for certain indoor settings where the risk of transmission is highest because of masks

00:05:13.300 aren't always worn, including restaurants, bars, and casinos, among others. Enforcement will be led by

00:05:20.340 by law officers, will be reasonable, and will rely on individuals and businesses to do the right thing.

00:05:28.240 That was yesterday. Ontario Premier Doug Ford announcing what he swore on a stack of Bibles he

00:05:33.480 will never do. He's bringing in mandatory vaccines and the concomitant vaccine passports,

00:05:39.380 essentially a biomedical security device that you must carry with you on your phone. For the first month,

00:05:44.940 you have to carry a picture of a PDF on your phone. But after that, it'll be an app, spyware, really.

00:05:50.940 I see news out of Australia that their proposed app will require you, within 15 minutes of notification by police,

00:05:58.340 to take a photo of yourself. And you use facial recognition. That's a tracking app being used in

00:06:05.080 Australia in the name of the quarantine. They will require you, on 15 minutes notice, to photograph

00:06:12.000 yourself. It is tagged to your location. It is a quarantine enforcement mechanism. And do you think

00:06:20.120 that Ontario's COVID app will stop at just measuring COVID? Or will it have new functionalities,

00:06:26.320 like Australia's done? Well, that's the context of our meeting with one of Canada's very few

00:06:31.760 law professors who thinks about civil liberties in an active way, not a historical way. I'm talking

00:06:36.800 about Professor Bruce Party of Queen's University Law School. Pleasure to have you here in the studio.

00:06:41.600 Thanks for having me.

00:06:42.440 Thank you for being here. I remember in the 20th century, when I was a kid,

00:06:47.760 thinking that civil liberties were an interesting thing, an idealistic thing. They're also a thing of

00:06:52.980 the left. Berkeley and freedom of speech. In this country, Alan Borovoi, a civil libertarian. These

00:07:00.980 are folks who would take atrocious cases to prove a point that freedom is for everyone. And that's how

00:07:07.040 they showed their liberalism. They would take cases that they disagreed with, like the ACLU sending

00:07:12.880 Jewish and black lawyers to defend Klansmen to make the point. Here we are in an actual real civil 0.82

00:07:18.900 liberties crisis. And where are all the civil liberties lawyers? Good question. They are hard

00:07:25.380 cases, I'm afraid. The problems with these passports seem obvious, but the legal remedies are not so

00:07:34.140 much. And as you say, the left has a history of defending civil rights, but you can see how they're

00:07:39.980 scurrying into the dark corners. Now, I mean, Andrea Horvath is an example. Recently, she made the

00:07:47.460 statement, I think, on social media that we had to proceed carefully and look out for civil liberties

00:07:53.780 and human rights and was quickly persuaded to withdraw that remark and correct herself and say

00:07:59.580 that this is not a time for human rights. You know, there's no pandemic exemption or suspension in our

00:08:06.920 charter of rights. I checked. It doesn't say this doesn't apply in an emergency. In fact, the opposite.

00:08:11.280 All of Canada's emergency legislation has to be charter compliant and has some tools in there to

00:08:18.280 make sure it's so. I even saw liberal cabinet ministers saying, oh, the charter, poo-pooing the

00:08:24.080 charter itself, which used to be the lifeblood of the Liberal Party. Yes. Well, the thing about

00:08:29.280 constitutional documents like the charter is that you really need them the most when these kinds of

00:08:37.000 crises arrive. And so if the presumption is we can set them aside when we have a problem, then there

00:08:43.700 doesn't seem to be very much reason for having them. Section one is the famous Achilles heel of the

00:08:50.500 charter. This is the reasonable limits provision. And in a crisis like this, an emergency, it looks so far

00:08:59.860 like courts are inclined to say, well, yes, maybe your charter rights have been infringed, but given the

00:09:05.140 circumstances, that's okay. One judge, for example, recently compared this COVID period to a time of

00:09:12.680 war and said, well, and during times of war, governments can expect citizens to give up some

00:09:20.020 of their freedoms to get on the team. And if that's going to be the rule for the charter, then the

00:09:25.680 charter diminishes in importance. You know, you're exactly right. Free speech, for example,

00:09:32.140 you don't need it when you're talking about, you know, gardening or sports. You need it on the tough

00:09:38.100 cases. Otherwise, it doesn't really count for anything. And I think civil liberties in a time

00:09:43.340 of war, that's pretty much when you do need it. Just before we came in here, you and I were talking

00:09:47.720 briefly about the Japanese internment during the Second World War. And we know that that was wrong

00:09:52.820 because I was judging people based on race. They weren't a proven threat of anything. It was just

00:09:57.820 because they happened to be genetically Japanese descendants. But what you just described,

00:10:03.520 and I don't know which judge you're quoting, maybe you would tell us, if that judge were around

00:10:08.200 in 1941, that judge would be saying, hey, sorry, Japanese folks, we know this is really wrong.

00:10:14.440 But sorry, you know, into the internment camps you go. I mean, if you're saying an emergency permits

00:10:20.780 anything, then first of all, everything will be an emergency. Correct. Including a disease that has

00:10:26.760 a 99% plus recovery rate. That's absolutely true. Yes, correct. Yes. So who was the judge and what

00:10:31.220 were they saying? I believe it was from the federal court. I forget the name of the judge, but it was

00:10:34.580 a COVID case. Was it on the quarantine case? It was a quarantine case. I think that we crowdfunded

00:10:39.140 some litigation there. We were very disappointed. Yes. That was the case where this government policy

00:10:44.540 said you have to stay for three days at an airport hotel. Right. Correct. Yes. Instead of going

00:10:48.580 straight home, one of our reporters went through that. He counted, he had 14 personal interactions

00:10:54.720 in his stay there, as opposed to just going straight home. And the federal court says, sorry,

00:10:59.620 that's legally kosher. Right. Well, you see, this is part of what this is all about, right? This is 0.82

00:11:04.800 symbolic. It's not real. If you look at a lot of the data and the evidence, now I, of course,

00:11:12.720 I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist, but I can read. And I've read a lot of the stuff. And

00:11:17.380 this seems to me to be more symbolic of something than real. If I can make this comparison,

00:11:24.840 it seems a little bit like Canada's climate change solutions, which actually will make

00:11:30.640 no difference to anything. But they're still very important because it's important to be doing the

00:11:35.460 right thing in the public good. That is a very perceptive comment. And we see that Justin Trudeau

00:11:41.400 is now saying, hey, this has been such a great 18 months. Let's apply it to global warming here.

00:11:47.140 Let's take a look at him saying that just the other day. He's loved the last 18 months. He wants

00:11:52.340 a climate emergency. Take a look. What we learned from this climate, this COVID crisis, we will be

00:11:59.120 applying to the climate crisis, to the housing crisis, to reconciliation, to making sure that

00:12:05.460 everyone has good jobs and careers that carry them through and create opportunities for their kids.

00:12:10.920 Yeah, I think politicians love a crisis. They love a war. It makes them very important. It makes

00:12:16.540 journalists very important. It excuses a lot of things. And it distracts from solving more humdrum

00:12:22.860 problems.

00:12:23.460 Yes, but one of the differences between this and, well, there are lots of differences, but one

00:12:28.840 difference between this and war is that this seems to me to be far more insidious. So you talked about

00:12:35.820 the Japanese internment. I mean, that was a terrible thing, but it was an obvious thing. They weren't

00:12:41.900 doing that for the good of those individuals. They didn't pretend to do that. They said, well, sorry,

00:12:47.520 we have to go here, but it's for the greater good. In this case, these vax mandates are being

00:12:54.420 presented as, well, it's for your own good. That's a very perceptive point. I mean, no one was

00:13:00.320 pretending that this was good for the Japanese. We were saying that is awful, but we're in a war. 0.57

00:13:05.300 We have to do it. I think just the same way so much of airport security is security theater.

00:13:13.660 Right. I don't know if they've ever caught a terrorist in 20 years in any airport in North

00:13:18.420 America. I think a lot of this is public health theater. And we saw that with the mask and then

00:13:23.120 the double masks. And we even saw people telling the New York Times, I want to wear a mask even

00:13:27.780 though I'm vaxxed because I don't want people to think I'm a Republican. Like it's a status thing.

00:13:31.600 It's an in crowd, out crowd, ruling class versus the ruled. It is so political.

00:13:37.600 And the vaccine itself has become political. Yes. And I mean, I remember when Donald Trump

00:13:44.700 talked about other remedies like hydroxychloroquine and instantly everyone who was against Trump

00:13:49.380 said, well, then we're not for that remedy. It really doesn't have anything to do with

00:13:54.520 a pandemic anymore at all, even if it ever did. No, no. It's a turning of the culture in a way,

00:14:01.480 or one of the symptoms of the turning of a culture. It's like a, it's like, it's like a purge of

00:14:07.780 independent thinkers or a purge of people who want to be able to make their own calls on their own

00:14:13.900 medications. You know, I look at what we rely on to keep us a liberal society, a happy place that we

00:14:22.640 like to live. And there's a lot of, I compare it to a net with lots of little nodes and you can have

00:14:29.960 one or two knots on a net that are broken and the net still holds. But if they are all broken,

00:14:35.600 the net breaks. And I'm talking about the government and the opposition whose job is to oppose.

00:14:41.180 I'm talking about law professors and judges and lawyers. I'm talking about colleges of physicians

00:14:46.860 and surgeons with maybe a second opinion. I'm talking about popular culture. There's so many

00:14:53.100 institutions and every single one of them, I believe has failed. And so all of a sudden we

00:15:00.980 went from a happy society to what I regard as next to a tyranny. We're not there yet, but my God,

00:15:06.940 we're moving there fast. I think it's because every single one of these institutions failed at the same

00:15:10.840 time. Yeah. I think that's a, I think that's an interesting comment. To me, there's very interesting

00:15:16.100 connection between this crisis and freedom of speech, which we're all, which is also in crisis.

00:15:23.380 Yes. Because I mean, the two things seem to be different subjects. One is, is, is public health

00:15:29.660 and, and personal medical decisions. And the other one is speech. But, but there's the very close

00:15:35.340 connection between them because a lot of the information about the vaccines and about the virus

00:15:41.660 and about the lockdowns has been censored. So for example, the Ontario College of Physicians and

00:15:47.800 Surgeons, and when I say college, I don't mean school. I mean the regulator, the regulator that

00:15:51.800 licenses physicians a little while ago came out and basically said to the doctors, you will not talk

00:15:57.880 about this unless you're talking in an approved way or we, or your license will be in danger. Now

00:16:03.400 that's all about the, the, the virus, but it's also about speech. I mean, the whole idea of a second

00:16:10.200 opinion that, you know, I want to get a doctor, a second opinion doctor. Can I get another opinion?

00:16:16.220 Sometimes doctors recommend you get another opinion because so much of medicine is an art,

00:16:22.060 not just a science. And it used to be that when you got a second opinion, that second opinion was

00:16:27.140 not perceived as a threat to the legitimacy of the first opinion. You know, Richard Feynman, the,

00:16:32.780 the great physicist and scholar said, science is the belief that the experts can be wrong.

00:16:38.000 Right, right, right. And the minute you think, no, that the expert is a high priest like Anthony

00:16:42.720 Fauci, then you're not doing science anymore. You're doing religion or superstition. That's

00:16:46.120 right. That's right. It's science in a hierarchy and science doesn't really have hierarchies. That's

00:16:50.780 the way it's supposed to be. We've published probably 20,000 videos on YouTube since we started

00:16:55.820 our company. And I think we got one strike. That's what YouTube calls it when you're outside of the

00:17:01.960 policy and actually had it reversed. But suddenly YouTube has new rules. If we say that a certain

00:17:10.620 medicine called ivermectin, which by the way, won the Nobel prize for medicine, has been used millions

00:17:15.820 of times, saved millions of lives. If we say that that is a cure for this virus, and I don't know if

00:17:20.820 it is, how would I know? Right. But if we have that opinion, we will get a strike as if we showed

00:17:26.540 a terrorist act or a snuff movie or obscene pornography. There's a list of things you're

00:17:33.480 not allowed to say about this virus that are incredibly particular about the providence of

00:17:37.960 the virus. And if you contradict health authorities, which are political authorities, YouTube has a list

00:17:46.840 of very specific things that if you say them, it'll be tantamount to you having an ISIS channel

00:17:53.180 or something. I've never seen anything like it in my life. And part of the trouble that we're in

00:17:58.780 right now is that all of these things are happening and it's not entirely clear that they are actually

00:18:06.320 violations of any of our constitutional rights. Well, and that's what's scary to me because we

00:18:12.220 talked about the hotel quarantine lawsuit. We have funded a few lawsuits here. We intend to fund

00:18:16.820 several more about the vaccine passports. And yet other than a tiny detail in Quebec's curfew law

00:18:23.440 that I think applied to homeless people, I am unaware of any judge anywhere in Canada who has

00:18:29.300 anywhere slowed down, let alone stopped a lockdown provision. And I know, and there's plenty of cases

00:18:38.620 have gone to court. I wouldn't say a hundred, but whether it's a human rights commission, whether it's

00:18:43.620 federal court, whether it's provincial court, I have not seen any ruling yet.

00:18:48.400 And the thing about the vaccine mandates, the vaccine passports, is that they're less obviously

00:18:55.540 violations of charter rights than the lockdowns were. In the lockdowns, you can say, well, you're

00:19:00.260 keeping me in my house. That surely is a restriction of my liberty under Section 7. But with the vaccine

00:19:07.100 passports, here you have a situation where the government is doing indirectly what it probably could

00:19:13.240 not do directly. So for example, if the government of the province or the federal government came

00:19:18.120 down and said, we're going to have an actual vaccine mandate, everybody will get a vaccine

00:19:23.780 or we will find you or throw you in prison. If you had that, then that would be pretty obviously

00:19:29.140 a violation of Section 7, I think. And a judge-

00:19:33.020 Life, liberty, and the security of the person, that's what that is?

00:19:35.320 That's right. It would be an enforced medical treatment without consent. 1.00

00:19:38.420 Right. Okay. But that is not what's happening. The charade that's going on is that these vaccine

00:19:47.460 passports are actually preserving your ability to choose. You don't have to get a vaccine. You do not

00:19:54.500 have to get a vaccine under these vaccine passports. The story is the choice is yours, but of course,

00:20:01.220 there are consequences to your choice. And so don't get one if you don't want to. But if you don't,

00:20:06.300 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

00:20:12.140 job, but it's still your choice. Yeah. And that's no choice at all. You would be shocked at my email

00:20:18.440 inbox, the pain and fear of people who cannot afford to lose a job. So many people are one

00:20:25.740 paycheck away from not making rent. Yes. Yes. And you don't feel like you're at risk from the virus.

00:20:32.560 Because you maybe live a healthy life. Maybe you know a year and a half into it that it's really

00:20:37.680 old people, fat people, people with underlying comorbidities, as they say. So I saw a survey

00:20:45.120 from Abacus Polling that said the average vaccine objector is a 42-year-old Ontario mom who votes

00:20:52.680 liberal. Yeah. I saw that. Yeah. So a 42-year-old mom, by the way, I should tell you that under the 1.00

00:20:59.020 vaccine adverse event registry, that is the most dangerous group in terms of adverse events

00:21:06.580 from the vaccine. Just coincidentally, maybe it's not a coincidence that moms are the most worried.

00:21:12.060 Right. Because

00:21:12.600 to tell that mom, who's probably protective of her kids and protective of health and probably thinks

00:21:22.640 more about health than the husband. I mean, moms are often in charge of health for the family, 1.00

00:21:27.480 right? To tell that mom, you'll lose your job. Your husband will lose his job. Your kids will be

00:21:35.420 kicked out of school. They won't be able to go to school. They'll have to do Zoom classes from home,

00:21:39.580 which is not real school. Right. Is that a free choice? That's like, you know, in the Godfather

00:21:45.080 movie, when Luca Brasi says, you know, I made him an offer. He couldn't refuse. He had a gun to his

00:21:49.380 head. Your signature or your brain's on the paper. Well, it's an interesting sort of legal problem and

00:21:55.360 conceptual problem, right? Because there are some circumstances in which when employers require

00:22:01.740 employees to do things, it seems to be completely legitimate and we don't call it coercion. So for

00:22:07.340 example, if you're working for someone and they say, go mop the floor and you don't want to mop

00:22:13.560 the floor and you say, well, I'm being coerced. Well, in a way you are because you either have to

00:22:18.380 mop the floor or lose your job. But on the other hand, you can quit if you want to and go somewhere

00:22:22.000 else. But it's what you signed up for. I'm going to be a floor mopper. Sure. Now that's the difference.

00:22:27.000 Right. And because it's a variation or a change to your employment conditions, that's the theory

00:22:34.760 upon which a lawsuit might rest. So if you had an individual employment contract and the employer

00:22:41.240 sort of came in suddenly and said, right, from now on, this is the situation. Yeah. Constructive

00:22:45.940 dismissal. It's possible. They sprang it on you. They changed the deal. On the other hand,

00:22:51.340 some employment contracts allow for changing policies from the employer. So it all depends.

00:22:56.740 And it depends even more with respect to those workplaces that are unionized because they have

00:23:03.060 collective agreements. And then the question is, does this new policy of the employer conflict

00:23:08.720 with the collective agreement and does the union care? You know, it's so interesting. Again,

00:23:12.960 we were just chatting about this before we sat down. I see some robust unions, particularly those

00:23:18.140 with a working class sensibility. I think the American postal workers, for example,

00:23:21.880 they're saying, no way are we doing this. The Toronto Police Association, the cops union,

00:23:25.860 they're saying, no way. And that's interesting because they're going to be the enforcers in some

00:23:29.420 ways. Yeah. But then they don't want the facts for them. They're healthy young guys. Right.

00:23:33.140 You're a 30-year-old cop that probably works out to stay fit for your job. You have an extremely low

00:23:40.120 rate of serious harm or death from this virus. And they know it. They're not taking the jab.

00:23:46.760 But I see other unions, frankly, political unions, pink-collar, white-collar unions that are

00:23:53.060 dependent on government friendship. Like Unifor came out saying, we love these vaccines.

00:23:58.540 Right.

00:23:59.060 What's it like on campus? Are you able to speak about-

00:24:02.580 My perception is that many of the university faculty unions are generally supportive of these

00:24:11.860 measures.

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.

00:24:28.040 But it is true. I don't think that anybody's actually lost any job or pay over it.

00:24:32.640 You know, I really think that's part of it. There is an industry that has grown up. I mean,

00:24:38.420 we know that Jeffrey Bezos doubled his net worth. Amazon, Netflix, Disney Plus, all the, you know,

00:24:44.700 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

00:24:57.760 weren't. I sense an injustice there.

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.

00:27:36.000 Oh, yeah.

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?

00:28:25.160 I mean, that in itself steps beyond.

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.

00:29:16.580 Funny word, isn't it? Yeah.

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, 1.00

00:34:39.760 they won't even allow medical exemptions.

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 0.77

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

00:35:35.180 medical exemptions, that's insane. Right.

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

00:36:21.200 cultural moment. Things are turning badly.

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

00:36:29.320 lawyer. I need a good judge. 0.93

00:36:30.620 Yeah. Right.

00:36:31.120 I think that's where we are, but let me ask you, are there good lawyers? Are there other

00:36:35.040 professors?

00:36:35.480 Oh, indeed there are.

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.

00:37:07.860 Are they shy or afraid?

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 0.99

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 0.64

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 0.99

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.

00:43:28.580 More ahead.

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.

00:44:47.060 Thank you for watching.

00:44:48.120 Good night.

00:44:48.460 Good night.

00:44:49.920 Good night.

00:44:50.520 Good night.

00:44:52.140 Good night.

00:44:52.380 Good night.

00:44:52.760 Good night.

00:44:54.260 Good night.

00:44:55.480 Good night.

00:44:56.580 Good night.

00:44:57.760 Good night.

00:44:58.140 Good night.

00:45:00.600 Good night.

00:45:04.280 Good night.

00:45:05.140 Good night.

00:45:06.840 Good night.

00:45:09.920 Good night.

00:45:10.760 Good night.

00:45:12.920 Good night.

00:45:14.320 Good night.

00:45:15.120 Good night.

00:45:15.960 Good night.

Rebel News Podcast - September 03, 2021

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Feature interview with Prof. Bruce Pardy, Queen's University Faculty of Law

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