Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Part cowboy, part rock-and-roll singer, part lawyer： an interview with Chad Williamson

00:00:00.000 tonight part cowboy part rock and roll singer and part lawyer a feature-length conversation

00:00:20.220 with our friend chad williamson it's december 26 this is the ezra levant show

00:00:24.680 you know i remember in law school there were people who just wanted to learn the law to get a job

00:00:44.000 and there were some people who learned the law to crusade i suppose i was one of them but

00:00:49.380 unfortunately a lot of the people who went into law for political reasons

00:00:53.220 wanted to use the law as a tool to control others and grow the scope of government a tool

00:00:58.480 of authoritarianism that was my observation in law school some 30 years ago 25 years ago but

00:01:05.060 it's even worse in practice and now some of those leftist activist law students

00:01:09.700 are now sitting as judges well our next guest is a freedom-oriented lawyer one of the few in canada

00:01:16.500 to devote himself so much to the cause of individual liberty i'm talking about chad williamson he's our

00:01:22.020 special guest today he's next

00:01:23.620 and joining me now via skype from calgary is chad williamson chad great to see you again and thanks

00:01:38.460 for a year of outstanding lawyering you know our side of the aisle often looks skeptically on lawyers

00:01:46.520 because lawyers are often a tool used by the bad guys but when we have a lawyer on our side fighting

00:01:52.700 for freedom fighting against the bad guys and winning i find our people are extra affectionate

00:01:57.600 because it's such a rare thing yeah and i mean it's uh when when when when you're up against uh the all

00:02:05.280 powerful state and one of the only mechanisms that you have available is the judiciary to combat uh

00:02:14.520 unconstitutional laws regulations uh and actions of the state uh sometimes lawyers can be uh your

00:02:21.440 friend and uh if you find a reasonably uh priced lawyer uh all the better yeah i mean i just think

00:02:28.000 that uh like so many other institutions and professions lawyering has become pretty woke um i didn't go to my

00:02:36.600 law school reunion but i talked to someone who did he said he could barely talk to half the people there

00:02:41.060 it really has colonized the profession and um now obviously there are it depends like uh there are

00:02:49.340 different kinds of lawyers um in different fields but i think that the law itself has taken on a woke

00:02:57.040 edge to it and law societies which govern the profession have been at the vanguard of that

00:03:02.800 maybe it's different in calgary would you say that the average calgary lawyer where you're based is

00:03:07.120 like the average calgarian or would you say they're more leftist and more progressive than the ordinary

00:03:11.560 person in the city i i think that the angling towards the wokeism and the leftism in the legal

00:03:19.640 profession in calgary is sadly uh similar to the ubiquity and the profession that we see across the

00:03:26.920 country and i i mean i didn't i didn't come face to face uh necessarily with the wokeism in the legal

00:03:35.240 profession until recently in a very peculiar circumstance i actually attended a seminar put

00:03:41.720 on by the law society and uh about how to just manage a really stressful practice i'm a business

00:03:47.220 owner i'm a pretty tough guy i deal with fairly complex and stressful situations every day but

00:03:53.680 everyone can obviously use real tangible practical um you know tips to uh better manage uh you know their

00:04:00.460 mental health their marriage uh their family their work-life balance so i uh i signed up for this

00:04:05.740 course and i thought oh this is gonna be great maybe they're gonna have a psychiatrist on um you

00:04:10.840 know maybe they're gonna you know uh tell me to do a little yoga or something that was kind of what i

00:04:15.300 was expecting and to a degree i got that but what was really bizarre is there was a section i attended the

00:04:22.700 full conference which i believe was about two days about critical race theory uh white supremacy uh

00:04:29.780 colonialism and and i kind of i i was i was flabbergasted that i mean the the the the uh the

00:04:38.380 course was called well-being in practice and the first thing that i thought is what the heck does this

00:04:43.820 critical race theory stuff have to do with stress in the practice of law i don't think that um you know

00:04:51.700 your ethnicity or your skin color or anything like that should even enter into that equation we're all

00:04:58.240 lawyers we're all members of the bar we all get stressed out and there should be some practical tips

00:05:02.860 uh for us to uh uh to be able to continue to do this stressful job so it was very bizarre and of course

00:05:09.640 we've got diversity equity and inclusion uh an inclusion language now as part of some of the law

00:05:16.880 society regulations so it's uh it's a little unnerving yeah you know and i i think you're from

00:05:22.420 calgary originally as am i calgary has always been what i i consider to be a race blind city um anyone

00:05:30.500 who knows the stampede knows that unlike the hollywood stereotype of cowboys and indians in fact

00:05:35.540 uh indians are cowboys i mean uh the the stampede has had a key element of the stampede since the 1.00

00:05:43.060 beginning has been strong relationships with indigenous people i mean they have the indian

00:05:48.700 village and they have the you know the the stampede queen and the the indian stampede queen and by the

00:05:53.740 way they use the word indian i don't know if they've finally stopped doing that but this is real like

00:05:57.560 alberta in particular i remember there's a school near where i grew up called the john ware school named

00:06:03.640 after a black cowboy what's a black cowboy doing in southern alberta well a lot of people in the states

00:06:10.920 came north we were the the underground railroad and if you're just an american black uh come to canada 0.53

00:06:18.580 and be be free and you know i i had a rivalry in college with naheed nenshi but he was the first

00:06:26.140 muslim mayor of a major city in canada wasn't in toronto wasn't in new york it was in calgary so the

00:06:33.100 to try and graft on to calgary which i grew up in when i went to uh country school out there in spring

00:06:40.580 bank my sister and i were the only jews in a school of 400 people there were two black kids two 0.99

00:06:45.620 chinese kids and you know 396 white kids i mean the idea that and it was perfect it was a great 1.00

00:06:52.680 place the idea that that alberta needs to be schooled on racism that is completely a transplanted

00:07:01.100 project from the states which has deep race issues including slavery i think they're the

00:07:07.380 colonialist frankly i mean growing up in alberta as a young person you know and even at that country

00:07:13.520 school frankly the minority kids were treated like celebrities in a way i know i'm just we're spending

00:07:20.400 too much time talking about that i actually just wanted to talk to be a lawyering but you but you

00:07:24.560 make a good point that even even in alberta the lawyering is about you know grievance and critical

00:07:30.620 race let's talk about some cases because that's that's really how you started your work not just

00:07:35.380 with rebel news but with the democracy fund i wouldn't mind talking about a couple of those

00:07:39.440 things i think one of the most thrilling moments in rebel news was in 2021 so it's a little more than a

00:07:47.960 year ago when for the second time justin trudeau's hand-picked election debates commission banned rebel

00:07:57.140 news from attending the leaders debates which is outrageous and which two years earlier the federal

00:08:03.000 court had ordered them not to do federal court in 2019 says that was illegal you didn't have any

00:08:08.280 proper rationale you didn't decide this properly you didn't have any set rules you delegated this out

00:08:12.980 to some other journalists this was unfair and they let us in in 2020 in 2019 for the next two years

00:08:20.000 trudeau's debate commission studied that 2019 ruling and thought how can we plug those holes how can we

00:08:26.780 patch this up so that when we ban rebel news in 2021 it'll be subject it will withstand the scrutiny

00:08:34.940 of the court and you were the lawyer we hired in 2021 and i remember talking to you in advance and you

00:08:41.800 and our other lawyers said ezra uphill battle want to prepare you we're probably going to lose and by the

00:08:47.760 way if you counted up all the lawyers on the other side between the department of justice the debate

00:08:51.800 commission uh i forget they were i think there was a grand total of seven lawyers including they hired

00:08:56.820 some private sector lawyers seven lawyers there was nine inside nine nine nine nine lawyers because we

00:09:04.480 had two from the attorney general's office in addition to a senior partner at the downtown uh branch of one

00:09:12.640 of the magic circle firms and uh her six uh uh underlings that uh had obviously been assisting um the

00:09:20.120 government nine well i gotta change my story because i've always said there were seven so it was nine

00:09:24.680 to one you were the one lawyer on our side nine nine to nine to two oh yeah okay and this is an

00:09:32.660 interesting story so before mr uh uh martin raymond who we've uh you know uh affectionately call party

00:09:40.240 marty down here he was one of the uh lawyers that uh spent a lot of time uh down at the coots blockade

00:09:46.700 uh representing uh people uh giving charter advice uh marty worked for another law firm and uh i'd

00:09:54.380 essentially kind of got the call on a long weekend had to give up a really glorious labor day weekend i

00:10:00.700 had i remember i thank you for that and i kind of thought oh they're calling me to fall on the sword

00:10:06.480 because nobody else wants to do this and um you know what it's it was such an important fight for

00:10:12.340 freedom of the press and the fact that this had to be it had to be fought on principle even if we were

00:10:19.280 to lose this is one of those those cardinal cases where if the government is allowed to pick and choose

00:10:28.380 its critics and the journalists that report on the inner workings of the government then we're starting

00:10:33.980 that slippery slide into a third or third authoritarianism and and tyranny and i i called martin

00:10:40.520 and said uh you know hey buddy i gotta i gotta pull in a favor can you come and spend the weekend in the

00:10:46.280 office with me it's not going to be a lot of fun uh you know we know the law firm that is on the other

00:10:51.100 side we know the tactics of the government they're going to clearly dump a a tranche of documents on us

00:10:57.080 and uh martin gave up his weekend as well and funny enough out of all of us and i think a lot of the

00:11:04.560 folks i was speaking to at rebel including yourself myself included martin was the only one who knew

00:11:11.360 that we would win from the day that he saw um all of those rejection letters so i've got to give this

00:11:17.480 guy credit because i thought you know martin you're crazy this is a tough one they have nine government

00:11:23.140 lawyers hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars and they've had two years of preparation we've got

00:11:29.140 five days to prepare a response oh it was it was a miracle i i i was so certain we were going to lose

00:11:36.420 but like you say i thought we just have to fight our viewers will expect us to fight even if there's

00:11:41.180 a one in a million chance we have to take it because what one in a million times it'll come up

00:11:46.060 lucky um i i truly thought we were going to lose when the hearing started i remember because this was

00:11:53.100 still things were locked down so this was a hearing done over zoom or skype i can't remember where so

00:11:58.380 if i recall you were in calgary um the government lawyers were in either toronto or ottawa if i recall

00:12:05.040 the judge and i think this made a difference the judge was from newfoundland because the federal court

00:12:11.640 is sort of like a one big national jurisdiction you never know what judge you're going to get if you go

00:12:16.220 to federal court i guess so the judge was from newfoundland and i think that made a difference

00:12:21.020 because i think newfoundlanders feel like outsiders and i think i remember that judge i think her name

00:12:26.220 was justice heenhan and uh i think you know right from the beginning i could sort of tell she didn't

00:12:33.260 like how she was being dealt with by these fancy toronto lawyers and it just went downhill for them

00:12:38.940 from there it was an amazing amazing trial and i know it was open i know a lot of members of the

00:12:43.740 public viewed it too that was perhaps our most successful day in court in the eight years of this

00:12:49.400 company and it was extremely exciting why don't you tell a little bit of that story including

00:12:52.880 justice heenhan one thing that was very interesting and this is this this was this had blown me away

00:13:00.040 because this was a career first is that we asked permission at the behest of rebel news to have this

00:13:06.700 publicized and to open um i believe it was over zoom or webex or something but to open up the room

00:13:13.220 and they opened it up to 2500 people to watch live wow um that doesn't happen in alberta that doesn't

00:13:20.880 happen at the court of king's bench it doesn't happen in provincial court i think it happens very

00:13:25.040 rarely in federal court but because we prevailed upon the fact that this was uh an issue of public

00:13:32.020 importance uh and also some urgency and of course with the federal election coming up uh we were very

00:13:37.940 surprised that the court allowed that and it was it's my understanding i'm trying to think back now and i

00:13:43.160 don't have the numbers but i believe that there were there was close to 2000 live viewers of that

00:13:49.520 court session and we had prepared uh a robust uh set of pleadings which are basically the all the

00:13:57.100 documents that lawyers rely on when they're making their submissions we had a nice brief which is kind

00:14:02.200 of like a an argumentative law school paper to telling the judge why we think uh that you were right

00:14:08.320 and of course they would have filed an opposing brief and really instead of relying uh or or just

00:14:14.700 rehashing all the stuff that we'd already provided to the judge which i think was very well prepared i

00:14:20.220 remember i spent 18 hours alone on just the saturday before with martin by the end of it we were ready to

00:14:27.160 choke each other it was uh i mean tempers flared but we did some pretty outstanding work i really just wrote

00:14:33.960 a grandiose soapbox speech about democracy freedom of the press uh and uh an opposition to the jackboots

00:14:43.100 of censorship and authoritarianism and i remember that i i i didn't have justice heenahan for about the

00:14:49.740 first five minutes i think she was a little cranky with me um she was kind of a a no bs gal um and 0.93

00:14:58.300 i i i kind of felt that out and and and uh uh pivoted to some degree and wrapped up my submissions

00:15:06.040 real quick uh then the government lawyers stepped in and uh i mean the rest is history they spent

00:15:11.900 you know more than an hour two hours trying to take her through a 2 000 page document dump that they 0.99

00:15:19.600 had given the court and given us uh only a day or two before uh and the judge just uh didn't have any of

00:15:26.440 and granted the injunction and ordered that rebel be accredited much to the chagrin obviously of the

00:15:32.820 liberal party and justin trudeau who was uh the uh the subject of a whole bunch of great great questions

00:15:39.400 uh by rebel and some of the other reporters that uh that attended um to to attend the debates it was

00:15:46.600 it was great i mean uh and i couldn't have been happier for a guy that was uh i'm not at the bar very

00:15:51.520 long i got called in 2017 for so for a young fellow like me and a young fellow like martin to

00:15:57.340 have such a significant victory uh and on the side of good against the forces of old and evil that was

00:16:03.400 really a milestone in my career of which working with rebel and the democracy fund we've had a ton

00:16:09.480 of them we're actually not bad lawyers yeah oh well that case was such an uphill battle i want to

00:16:15.680 just show you mentioned that we got the injunction uh that ordered trudeau's debate commission to

00:16:22.220 accredit us and we because it was still during covid mania i think only two of our people were

00:16:28.580 allowed in or something like that most of the joined by phone but we still got excellent questions

00:16:33.140 including to draw to to trudeau himself let me just show you two questions put to trudeau by virtue

00:16:40.000 of that win so what i'm saying is if we didn't win in court that day these next two questions i'm about

00:16:45.380 to show you put by tamara ugolini and alexa lavoie to trudeau they would not have ever even been

00:16:51.300 asked here take a look mr trudeau the only reason that i'm allowed to ask you this question is because

00:16:58.040 today the federal court ruled that the government doesn't have the right to determine who is or is

00:17:02.960 not a journalist this is the second election in a row that the court has overturned your government

00:17:09.020 do you still insist on being able to make that decision and why first of all questions around

00:17:17.020 accreditation were handled by the press gallery and the consortium of networks who have strong

00:17:24.220 perspectives on quality journalism and the important information that is shared with canadians

00:17:30.540 the reality is organizations organizations like yours that continue to spread misinformation and

00:17:41.900 disinformation on the science around vaccines around how we're going to actually get through

00:17:48.580 this pandemic and be there for each other and keep our kids safe is part of why we're seeing such

00:17:55.540 um unfortunate uh anger and lack of understanding of basic science and quite frankly your i won't call

00:18:06.600 it a media organization your group of individuals uh need to take accountability for uh some of the

00:18:14.760 polarization that we're seeing in this country and i think canadians uh are cluing into the fact that

00:18:21.660 uh there is a really important decision we take about the kind of country we want to see and i salute

00:18:28.040 all extraordinary hard-working journalists that put science and facts at the heart of what they do

00:18:34.960 and ask me tough questions every day uh but make sure that they are educating and informing canadians

00:18:42.800 from a broad range of perspectives which is the last thing that you guys do

00:18:47.460 hello mrs trudeau alexandre for rebel news so mrs trudeau je vais revenir rapidement sur ce qui s'est

00:18:53.520 passé hier vous avez déabolisé l'un des rares médias qui ne reçoit pas d'argent du gouvernement vous

00:19:00.420 avez exprimé votre opinion en disant que nous propageons la désinformation si c'était vrai et si c'était

00:19:07.340 le cas la cour fédérale nous aurait pas permis d'être ici aujourd'hui je suis moi même scientifique et je me

00:19:14.220 basse sur les faits ma question la suivante l'israël est l'un des pays les plus vaccinés au monde ils sont

00:19:23.160 rendus maintenant à leur quatrième rappel de vaccin ils ne considèrent plus que ceux qui ont reçu deux

00:19:28.320 doses de vaccin sont pleinement vaccinés ma question est plusieurs canadiens ne désirent pas avoir un rappel de

00:19:40.560 de vaccin allez-vous leur enlever leurs privilèges reliés au passeport vaccinal et aurez-vous l'obligence de

00:19:52.500 répondre à ma question en tant que premier ministre ou allez-vous encore diaboliser mon média j'ai

00:19:59.020 partagé ma perspective sur ton organisation hier soir j'ai plus rien à dire ça demande bien qui vous êtes merci

00:20:06.420 those were great questions and trudeau's answers were appalling and what gets me chad is is he said

00:20:13.540 your organization i won't even call it the news so the ink wasn't even dry on justice he and a hand's

00:20:19.460 ruling the federal court of appeal said yes we are journalists we must be accredited and they were

00:20:23.840 violating our rights for not doing so trudeau literally couldn't care less what a court said

00:20:28.900 you know the judge just said we are journalists let them in but he only uses the law fits to his

00:20:36.220 benefit he's the same prime minister who violated the conflict of interest act again and again what

00:20:41.660 does he care he surely abused the emergencies act there was no evidence of a national danger we saw

00:20:48.840 that what does he care you know he does whatever he can get away with and if he's called out on it he

00:20:53.860 doesn't care i think that not only was our win excellent but we showed that trudeau really

00:21:00.140 doesn't give a damn about the rule of law he really is a kind of tyrant and to be fair he told us that

00:21:05.700 he told us that communist china was the country he most admired of course ezra for a lot of the

00:21:14.660 a lot of the um you know the government oppressive uh radical left in this country they support the

00:21:22.740 courts obviously when the decisions run in their favor which is quite frequent given how uh the

00:21:29.660 judges in this country are appointed um which is through a judicial uh committee and then appointed

00:21:35.860 by the government so we've got a lot of political appointees to the bench and we've seen that uh in some

00:21:42.000 of the other decisions most notably the uh chris scott decision and the compelled speech order but of

00:21:47.740 course when uh in a blue moon we get a judge uh who actually renders a decision uh uh based on the

00:21:56.880 principles of liberty fairness uh uh and and procedural and natural justice um it's it's suddenly convenient

00:22:05.520 to uh to to disagree with those rulings well i tell you that was incredible and thanks that i really

00:22:12.660 did not think we were going to win that and when we did it was it was so great and it was such a

00:22:18.060 validation that just because a politician says we're not journalists doesn't mean it's true and i i note

00:22:24.520 that we were alone in court chad and i mean i'm a little older than you when i grew up in the in the 80s

00:22:32.040 and 90s had this been done to any media company all the media companies would have gone to court they

00:22:38.520 would have pooled their resources they would have each chipped in a grand they would have hired an

00:22:42.800 excellent media lawyer who would have gone to court and say your honor i represent these 20 newspapers

00:22:47.120 like if you can read the court cases from the 80s and 90s they often did they called themselves the

00:22:51.900 consortium it was basically a bunch of media companies each chipping in a little and the judge

00:22:56.720 would take that lawyer very seriously because the judge would know that they speak for the entire

00:23:00.980 industry in a very principled way if this were 30 years ago we would have had

00:23:06.760 the canadian civil liberties association we would have amnesty international we would have pen canada

00:23:12.340 and we would have other media there canadian association of journalists who would have said

00:23:17.120 this is outrageous we may not agree with rebel news but you cannot pick on a journalist because

00:23:21.940 of his ideology none of that we were completely alone in court not one friend and i think that speaks

00:23:32.780 to the state of journalism in canada it's been colonized by trudeau and i think it speaks to

00:23:38.000 the fact of freedom of speech it has been replaced by these other ideologies by hurt feelings by micro

00:23:45.640 aggressions by trudeau's soft tyranny i that is very sad to me that the free speech culture that i grew

00:23:54.580 up in just a generation ago is pretty much gone i think i think what's also troubling is just the fact

00:24:02.220 um just the gleefulness in which some canadians are happy to see these fundamental human and civil

00:24:12.760 rights uh be eroded by government legislation and regulation and censorship um the uh as you've as

00:24:22.800 deemed them the the media party i don't think a a more accurate description uh could could be given

00:24:29.540 i mean it's uh it's really perplexing to see um as you might know ezra i have a degree in journalism

00:24:36.940 that i got before um i got my law degree and i got that from mount royal university here in calgary

00:24:43.220 and i mean i might be a little younger than you but when i was in uh journalism school one of the

00:24:50.380 main classes was called news agenda and they always taught uh and and these might have been some

00:24:56.800 dinosaurs on the you know kind of the the the death knell of the print media business which i think

00:25:02.280 uh you know kind of uh uh went extinct in in the early 2000s you're always supposed to get both sides

00:25:09.480 of the story uh or at least try to and at least allow the viewer or the reader or the consumer of the

00:25:17.140 media to uh uh take in an array of facts from uh the entire situation and come to their own conclusion

00:25:25.080 and we just don't see that in mainstream legacy dinosaur media anymore uh the headlines are just

00:25:32.620 politically charged um it's completely one-sided and and we only see them get experts we don't even

00:25:40.200 know who these experts are uh you know what what who qualifies as an expert uh that definition has

00:25:46.980 tended to slip most of these people aren't experts or they're just friends of the journalist uh and

00:25:52.220 you know let alone trying to get uh uh the the other side of the story and try to at least uh uh approach

00:25:58.720 uh someone else for an alternative talking point it's bizarre to see such a one-sided

00:26:04.240 national narrative uh and and it's quite disturbing yeah uh you mentioned chris scott and he of course

00:26:11.660 is the entrepreneur from a small place called mirror alberta i think it's less than a thousand

00:26:16.660 people who live there and uh the whistle stop i have actually yet to visit it in person though i

00:26:22.980 would very much like to it's sort of the everything shop in mirror alberta it's i think it's the gas

00:26:28.700 station it's the general store it's the restaurant it's sort of the the one place that otherwise you've

00:26:34.140 got to drive an hour or two down the road and um in mirror which is smaller than my high school

00:26:41.400 everyone knows everybody and you know if you're sick you know and if you're not sick and so chris

00:26:49.160 decided to keep his place open and if he didn't like it don't go in but because he was willfully

00:26:57.140 challenging the lockdown in alberta oh my god did they come down on him like a ton of bricks

00:27:03.400 and they padlocked his place they arrested him they put him in jail but they went further

00:27:11.960 and you mentioned this briefly a few minutes ago the judge who heard the case adam germain a liberal

00:27:18.800 appointee just frankly has no business being a judge he was a failed liberal candidate got appointed to

00:27:24.020 the benches like a patriot as if that's a gift to give a like a political bauble anyways adam germain

00:27:29.380 this liberal judge not only found chris scott guilty of contempt but ordered him whenever chris scott

00:27:38.500 would say anything in public on facebook in the media or whatever or ordered him to immediately pull

00:27:45.220 out this little card written by adam germain where chris scott would essentially have to renounce

00:27:52.440 himself denounce himself and say what i've told you is wrong and you should believe what the government

00:27:58.840 says and by the way this identical wording was given to arthur pavlovsky and these two cases were heard

00:28:05.120 together that judgment stood for months until the alberta court of appeal mercifully overturned it but

00:28:13.840 again where's the outrage could you imagine compelled speech where you were forced to say words like that

00:28:22.060 that's literally we used to call that a jailhouse confession or or or something like signed under duress

00:28:28.500 like and that was issued by a judge and i say again chad where were the howls of outrage i don't remember

00:28:38.440 that no and and and and and and again and again this just this this draws along along the same lines of

00:28:46.300 uh what we've been talking about this entire time is this gleeful um almost celebration of the legacy

00:28:54.500 media and the uh you know folks who may have once at once been political centrists now slip into uh the

00:29:04.600 dark recesses of what i would consider to be the radical left who uh want the internet to be censored

00:29:11.360 we're seeing new legislation new federal legislation come out to try to censor the internet how they're

00:29:16.140 going to do that i have no idea um one one one of my one of my uh libertarian friends whenever i get

00:29:25.680 down in the doldrums about the state of uh censorship government oppression uh and and and all that's wrong

00:29:33.480 in the world and that continues to go wrong especially during the times of covid one little

00:29:38.420 aspect of comfort i get is that the government has never uh they're never able to do anything

00:29:46.940 properly so despite all this money government delivers the worst services at the highest cost

00:29:53.500 and they're incompetent so i guess we can take a little bit of solstice in the fact that you know

00:29:59.320 if you try to police the internet you might be bit biting off a little bit more than you can chew

00:30:04.560 and now that we're seeing uh you know folks like elon musk step into the arena uh with the power of

00:30:11.200 capital and with the markets to uh kind of take reins of this stuff maybe there is some hope in fighting

00:30:18.380 back against uh uh you know the course of pressure of the state it's it's going to be interesting to see

00:30:23.860 yeah um you know it's funny i went to law school in alberta and the chart of rights and freedoms was

00:30:32.160 treated as a semi-holy document um next only to the bible and of course in the law school would be

00:30:40.300 ahead of the bible it represented who we are you know if you if you asked a a liberal they were what

00:30:47.080 defines canada they would probably say health care although not anymore i don't think anyone believes

00:30:51.980 that we have the best health care in the world i just i literally haven't heard that in years

00:30:55.580 they would probably say we're we're better than the americans um and if you press them they would

00:31:01.940 say our charter of rights i think they would say that i don't think i'm mocking i don't think i'm

00:31:05.860 that's a character i think a lot of them would say the charter of rights and they certainly taught

00:31:10.800 us that in law school but to this day the charter of rights other than in the case of chris god

00:31:15.720 and arthur pavlovsky that i mentioned i have not seen the charter of rights help a single canadian

00:31:21.300 during the lockdown i have not seen a substantial case anywhere succeed of any lockdown of the

00:31:30.560 curfews in montreal of the vaccine passports about people being fired from their job for not taking the

00:31:36.240 jab of all the insane things that were done to people maybe i'm missing one but i can't think of

00:31:42.120 a single case where a judge said the charter of rights does not have a pandemic exception there's no

00:31:47.900 teresa tam exemption or bonnie henry exemption or or dina hinchaw exemption and uh you can't do that

00:31:55.920 to people i don't think it's happened once and even crazier as far as i know our supreme court of

00:32:03.200 canada hasn't even talked about the lockdown say other than the chief justice one day announcing

00:32:08.040 he's imposing vaccine mandates on the supreme court of canada building itself which is basically

00:32:14.080 issuing a kind of judgment he just said oh by the way i'm for vaccine mandates good luck at subtext

00:32:20.600 good luck anyone trying to get a fair hearing from me and hey every single lower judge in this country

00:32:27.060 that looks up to me now you know you can sort of guess how i'm going to rule on cases of vaccine

00:32:32.520 mandates because i just announced one in the supreme court building so that's the only statement we've

00:32:37.480 heard from our supreme court that i know of on the lockdowns is that is the chief saying yeah you can't

00:32:42.420 work here if you're not jabbed now try and get a fair trial on the same issue at a lower court i think

00:32:46.800 the judges in the charter are one of the largest failures the last two years

00:32:51.080 to an extent i would completely agree and i think from the uh the large you know uh double stuffed uh

00:33:00.980 leather bound furniture up in the dusty dens of the higher courts uh ruling down on us kind of from up

00:33:08.800 on high i would agree i don't think that there's been any pushback or any real consideration given

00:33:15.520 to the sanctity uh and the car of of the cardinal principles of the charter of the constitution however

00:33:22.380 down in the trenches in the fight the fines campaign which uh for those uh watching who don't

00:33:30.740 know what that is that was the civil liberties project uh uh started by rebel and the democracy fund

00:33:37.660 to defend people there i think there was more than 2 000 cases this is from masking tickets social

00:33:43.980 distancing tickets uh protesting tickets uh tickets resulting from government overbearance during the

00:33:53.140 covid uh the covid pandemic now my firm had about 157 of those bad boys we're down to five we have not

00:34:03.980 had one trial conviction now in every single one of those cases we filed what's called a charter

00:34:10.400 application which is uh basically saying hey well even if you get my guy or my gal on the evidence

00:34:17.060 uh we still feel that his chart his or her charter rights were infringed now this uh engages not just

00:34:24.660 the crown prosecutor but also the attorney general kind of making it double the work and it's part of due

00:34:30.800 process and part of procedural fairness uh in this country in the courts um it's really easy to write

00:34:39.520 tickets and you know it's real easy to from up on high to decree that uh you know this uh this this

00:34:46.240 this this destructive covid mandate power the government wields is justified uh but down in the

00:34:53.900 trenches down in the provincial courts um when people are still afforded due process and to a degree

00:35:00.380 uh despite being charged they were still afforded due process and uh in most cases the crown

00:35:06.960 prosecution service just ran out of gas um now that wouldn't have been made possible without

00:35:12.640 the generous donations of people across the country to finance what is an immense and fairly expensive

00:35:21.100 uh legal endeavor i think it's probably one of the largest civil uh liberties um projects maybe in this

00:35:28.480 country's history i'm not too sure uh but there there are huge victories there and i'm not sure what

00:35:34.740 the the other provinces and jurisdictions look like but the fact that um there there's only a couple

00:35:39.840 guys working with me there's yoav niv uh mr sean maholshan marty raymond myself uh our senior uh ken

00:35:47.100 johnson you know five guys uh 157 charges toasted all of them uh we're still running five and we still

00:35:55.440 have chris scott obviously on the horizon here in the new year um but there's a disconnect between

00:36:01.840 what's happening in the trenches and what's happening on high and i think that should still

00:36:05.960 provide people with some hope well that does and thank you for that and in ontario paralegals are

00:36:11.700 allowed to run provincial offense trials so we have four in-house paralegals at the democracy fund

00:36:16.920 handling 1300 cases in ontario alone and you're right i think the number was 2100 nationally that

00:36:25.300 started as a rebel news project arthur pavlovsky was client number one and very soon we had 50 clients

00:36:31.140 and then one day in the meeting i blurted out we're gonna take a thousand and everyone said you're

00:36:36.540 crazy how are you gonna pay for that well we spun off the project to a new uh cra compliant charity that

00:36:43.380 was started it's got its own board its own staff its own bank account and that's why people who

00:36:48.240 donate to fight the fines or chris scott or arthur pavlovsky get that charitable tax receipt because

00:36:53.980 we handed that off to the democracy fund which was a great project and um the justice center for

00:36:59.480 constitutional freedoms was doing this kind of work also and you got to tip your hat to them they're

00:37:03.140 great but really there was a tiny bit of work done by the canadian constitution foundation and that's

00:37:10.660 about it the canadian civil liberties association which was very strong when i was a kid they

00:37:14.920 basically went on a two-year holiday and and the work fell to it's ironic because civil liberties

00:37:20.340 used to be such a left-wing thing like i remember the old boss of the civil liberties association was

00:37:24.680 this very left-wing jewish guy in toronto named alan boravoy and he was sort of this classic berkeley

00:37:31.680 style liberty guy where were the liberals where were the the left-wing libertarians last two years

00:37:40.600 they were hiding under their bed or or they were outright saying take the jab it was sort of crazy

00:37:45.540 now listen i don't want to take up too much of your time i appreciate it and thank you for the

00:37:48.660 recollection of of your work on the fight the fines and the chris scott story

00:37:53.100 um you represent three truckers from the lethbridge area who were part of the peaceful protest at the

00:38:02.920 coots blockade that was a trucker blockade that ended peacefully there was no violence whatsoever

00:38:08.260 there was a minor fender bender there was just a bit of an accident on the highway but there was

00:38:12.620 literally no violence the three truckers who were charged committed no violence one of them in fact is a

00:38:18.200 upstanding citizen in fort mcleod he's on the city council great guy um those charges were only laid

00:38:26.280 in the dying months of jason kenney's premiership like like for months nothing happened and then they

00:38:31.720 they charged these three guys and rebel news made the promise that we would finance their defense and

00:38:38.360 you have represented these three truckers i was down there in lethbridge for a really preliminary matter

00:38:44.460 the crown is dead serious about this aren't they you bet and i i i just want to uh just briefly correct

00:38:53.460 you and while uh rebel is responsible for funding my office has been assisting with funding as well

00:39:00.080 okay i personally represent a fellow by the name of george jansen who is one of the most uh humble

00:39:07.200 compassionate uh compassionate caring um and and and and and really calm and collected fellows i think

00:39:14.480 i've ever ever met now we also uh assisted in obtaining these folks their own independent counsel

00:39:22.040 so they've all got their own lawyers okay now we've been assisting with coordination but they're all

00:39:27.000 represented by individual lawyers so um it's being handled through rebel news and williamson law

00:39:31.980 um marco uh um marco van uh hugenboss he's the uh the councillor fellow who has also been charged

00:39:39.660 with mischief he is being represented by my old friend and a fight the fines weapon uh uh we know

00:39:46.660 as yoav niv who has been working with us hand in hand for like two and a half years um so he's in great

00:39:52.780 hands and we've just appointed a new fellow by the name of michael johnson from ontario to defend

00:40:00.300 alex van hirk much to the chagrin we believe of the crown prosecution service and mr johnson has

00:40:06.760 got 12 years of the criminal bar with a family history of military service and uh excellence and

00:40:13.320 uh the guy is a criminal defense beast so we've got independent counsel for these folks uh we've got

00:40:20.640 funding handled um and we're here to put up a fight um no concessions no admissions of any kind

00:40:27.360 uh but the crown is serious uh they're uh you know the the charge of mischief over 5 000 i believe

00:40:33.440 it carries a maximum penalty of up to 10 years in prison uh which isn't something that uh they even

00:40:39.060 give to people uh often who are convicted of seriously violent crimes so it's very peculiar um

00:40:46.140 frankly we've got a presumption of innocence in this country and the crown's going to have to do their

00:40:49.980 work we've got a a crown that we believe is fairly aggressive uh but i mean we've got a we've got a

00:40:56.760 tremendous history uh between my colleagues and i uh of putting up a bristled uh and vigorous defense

00:41:03.620 on all these cases and the crown's going to have to do their work ezra when you say you have the the

00:41:08.660 money covered that's through rebel news's trucker defense fund dot com right is that right that's

00:41:13.760 correct yeah okay i just want to click because there's so many cases here you mentioned you guys

00:41:17.960 took 157 plus chris scott so i i try and stay on top of many of them obviously i can't you know

00:41:24.880 no human can know all of them um so uh and so it sounds like things are in hand now let's just talk

00:41:30.260 for a moment because there were four people who were charged with conspiracy to commit murder

00:41:36.660 if i'm recalling now you correct me if my facts are wrong now rebel news has been asked to defend

00:41:44.780 them and our rule of thumb is that we don't defend people who commit murder or or commit violence or

00:41:51.200 we defend peaceful protesters i've had a number of people say ezra you have to defend them

00:41:57.240 you have to pay for their defense and i've said to them i'm open to persuasion on that and i'm open

00:42:05.840 to learning more and if it's a trumped up charge i'm open to that but i don't think that rebel news

00:42:10.900 viewers would feel comfortable crowdfunding when we said we're crowdfunding to protect peaceful

00:42:16.480 protesters if there was a charge involving grave threats of violence like conspiracy to commit

00:42:23.020 murder so i made the choice that we would defend the peaceful protesters the mischief charges against

00:42:29.520 george marco and alex and that we would take a step back from the ones accused of conspiracy to

00:42:35.900 commit murder do you know anything about that case because i'm sympathetic to the right that everyone's

00:42:41.480 innocent until proven guilty and then i do believe that the police probably trumped things up a bit

00:42:46.480 like they were in pr mode uh the rcmp works for justin trudeau we know they're in pr mode

00:42:51.860 but um do you have any thoughts on that or i don't know if you're at liberty to talk about those cases

00:42:56.380 i can imagine how how trying and traumatic it is for their families i just as the keeper or the helper

00:43:04.140 to crowdfund i feel like i also have an obligation to our viewers that if we said these are for peaceful

00:43:10.200 protesters and then out of the blue there's this conspiracy to commit murder charge that that just

00:43:14.900 doesn't fit the mandate of our fight the fines do you have anything you can say i don't want to put

00:43:19.240 you in a pickle if you have a particular position on this yeah so i'm not at liberty to uh to go into

00:43:25.580 any great detail um but i i i was one of the individuals that was responsible for conveying to

00:43:32.900 uh a a great a great number of people um over the last two years what the scope of the crowdfunding

00:43:41.620 would cover and that was for peaceful uh uh any any any any regulatory charges uh that would come out of

00:43:50.420 uh involvement in peaceful demonstrations um i mean criminal matters are completely different now

00:43:59.280 the mischief charges are criminal and they're not regulatory but initially the scope was uh

00:44:05.180 of my office was essentially to uh just provide people with uh their their uh their charter rights

00:44:12.840 and charter protections and uh uh you know information on what they were to do and what their rights were

00:44:19.100 if they were arrested um and that was really the scope of uh uh of any involvement uh of my office

00:44:26.500 going way back to um the protests in downtown calgary protesting uh vaccine mandates we were

00:44:32.580 kind of protest lawyers uh you know basically uh telling people that they had a right to remain

00:44:38.600 silent an immediate right to retain and instruct counsel um and just warn people that anything that

00:44:44.820 obviously they say to the authorities even if it seems quite benign can turn up in disclosure and be

00:44:50.520 used as evidence against them later now that scope was expanded to assist with a lot of the

00:44:56.400 tickets that were given to people who had equipment out on the highway and we're actually running um

00:45:02.600 i've got in numbers here we're currently running 35 cases under the ambit of the democracy fund

00:45:08.560 defending uh folks who uh were alleged to have uh violated the traffic safety act and traffic

00:45:16.440 regulations by purportedly having equipment out on the highway and we're still running those uh that's

00:45:22.020 being covered um in terms of uh these folks that were charged with conspiracy to commit murder charges

00:45:29.940 obviously there is a presumption of innocence in this country and i would uh uh you know i would be

00:45:36.660 reserved to come to draw any conclusions about what really happened whether uh this was a false flag

00:45:42.840 by the government which may be the case or uh whether these charges uh uh whether the allegations

00:45:49.240 will in fact be proven later i frankly just don't know because i haven't seen the evidence

00:45:54.540 um i suppose i'll come out in the watch the mayor coots by the way who testified at the public uh

00:46:00.380 inquiry says he thinks that it may have been a setup by uh by agents provocateurs that's quite something

00:46:06.200 for him to say because he wasn't very friendly to the truckers well listen i'm going to keep my eyes

00:46:10.080 and ears open on that because of course i'm sympathetic to the possibility that this is a trumped up

00:46:14.900 political charge on the other hand i i think i have a duty to our donors we certainly did not raise the

00:46:20.500 money in the name of defending people who were accused of conspiracy to commit murder um so i'm going

00:46:26.160 to keep my eyes and ears open on that um listen we just came out of the worst civil liberties bonfire

00:46:31.920 in this country's history and i i think that the war measures crisis the october crisis of 1970

00:46:39.800 of course they actually had soldiers on the street but then again it was time limited it was

00:46:44.340 geography limited and they really were murdering people bombs you know kidnappings and it really

00:46:50.560 was a foreign associated terrorist group the flq that had ties to cuba like it really was a kind

00:46:56.580 of insurrection even they overdid it but and then of course japanese internment which was a a racist

00:47:03.780 law that was brought in and for years japanese people were under lockdown both of those are atrocious 1.00

00:47:08.560 but by any measure both scope or depth or duration or geography the lockdowns of the pandemic were worse

00:47:16.420 i'm i'm not diminishing what happened in the war measures crisis or the japanese internment i'm not

00:47:22.780 and by the way the way we treat people under the indian act is atrocious too there are elements

00:47:27.280 there but what happened to millions of people over the last two years was the worst civil liberties

00:47:33.560 bonfire and rebel news and lawyers like you and the democracy fund and a handful of others fought

00:47:39.680 it while the rest of the people were silent and compliant chad it's great to catch up with you i know

00:47:45.800 that 2023 will still be a busy year because freedom can never let its guard down justin trudeau is relentless

00:47:53.020 and it's not just trudeau listen where was erin o'toole the so-called conservative leader for two years

00:47:58.720 so i think that we're going to continue to need freedom oriented lawyers and as long as rebel news

00:48:04.440 viewers believe in the court cases that we're taking we will be able to have that part of our

00:48:09.700 project it's what sets us apart from say true north or western standard both of which we admire

00:48:14.540 but at the end of the day rebel news doesn't just report the news sometimes we get involved and try and

00:48:19.440 fix things and you've helped us do that chad so thanks for your great work over these past few years

00:48:24.420 good luck in the projects you still have and i know that 2023 will bring more battles to come

00:48:29.440 we have a whole bunch of tricks up our sleeves uh some very exciting things coming down the pipe in 2023

00:48:36.600 uh some strategies that we've yet to deploy that i think are going to uh alter the legal landscape in

00:48:43.840 favor of freedom we've got uh as your viewers might know we've got a uh a big case against the rcmp that

00:48:51.100 we're still finishing up for the destruction of those excavators down the coots we've got another

00:48:56.600 big claim about alberta health services uh essentially firing somebody for uh whistleblowing

00:49:02.840 on rebel news so there's allegations that that's a wrongful termination and that could be a big case

00:49:07.980 we've seen that there there there are internal emails that they're hiding from us and that being

00:49:13.560 alberta health services so we've got some cross examinations on some fairly disturbing emails that

00:49:19.180 we're we're in receipt of from alberta health services coming up in the new year as well so

00:49:23.080 the fight's not over yet there will be a reckoning and the information will come out right on well for

00:49:29.680 those who want to help i recommend truckerdefensefund.com that's the largest project of the ones chad

00:49:36.040 outlined chad good luck and thanks again for your time thanks a million ezra all right there you have

00:49:41.920 it chad williamson one of the freedom lawyers frankly we had dozens of lawyers across the country now the

00:49:48.480 democracy fund has four lawyers in-house and four paralegals but still we rely on talented lawyers

00:49:54.040 like chad around the country to fight the battles in every nook and cranny well that's our show for

00:49:59.240 today until tomorrow on behalf of all of us here at rebel world headquarters to you at home good night

00:50:04.560 and keep fighting for freedom

00:50:06.400 made in the right

00:50:08.280 believe in the right

00:50:13.720 you

00:50:14.100 you

00:50:15.160 you

00:50:15.720 you

00:50:19.320 you

00:50:21.260 you

00:50:23.240 you

00:50:23.360 you

Rebel News Podcast - December 27, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Part cowboy, part rock-and-roll singer, part lawyer： an interview with Chad Williamson

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript