Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Randy Hillier's big win： JCCF helps former MPP win major legal victory over lockdown tyranny

00:00:00.100 Hello, my friends. I'm very happy about today's show. Boy, it's not that often you get good news from the courts of law, but the Court of Appeal of Ontario has issued a resounding defense of the constitutional right to freedom of assembly. I'll take you through it.

00:00:15.760 But it's actually the first time any senior court has dealt with that freedom, and the result was positive. We'll talk with John Carpe. That's ahead. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month. Not only did you get the video, you help keep Rebel News strong, and we depend on you.

00:00:45.760 Tonight, a rare win at the Court of Appeal for Freedom. What a good news story. It's April 9th, and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.

00:00:59.800 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:15.760 I just want everyone to get away from the police. Back up, please. Go. Back up.

00:01:27.800 Let's just do it. We'll let you give her a step back. 1.00

00:01:31.080 Step back. Step back. Go back up. Step back. Go back up. 0.81

00:01:34.020 No, no. We're going to disperse. We're not going to disperse. Back up.

00:01:37.820 We're staying in the park. We're staying in the park. We're staying in the park.

00:01:42.260 We're staying in the park. How are you going to do that, Randy?

00:01:45.960 Hey, Randy's asking that we back off again, so let's take a step back.

00:01:49.960 Back up. Let's take a step back for Randy, okay?

00:01:52.900 Come after me. I welcome him. I will not back down. I will not. I have... I do not fear police.

00:02:00.020 You know? I do not fear Doug Ford.

00:02:02.520 Back up. Back up. No, no, no, no.

00:02:05.520 Go back into your speech. Through you. You don't be lying to me. You don't be lying to me.

00:02:10.020 You don't be lying to me. You don't be lying to me.

00:02:15.720 Nobody should fear government in a free country, and I welcome, I welcome Chief Callahan any day of the week to come and see me, or Chief Skinner or Chief whoever.

00:02:30.720 Well, it's easy to despair. So many of the cases that are champion for civil liberties in this country lose.

00:02:37.420 I think of Tamara Leach's conviction just a week ago. I was quite certain that she'd be acquitted.

00:02:44.120 The trial was so abusive of her. The judge during the trial seemed supportive. The law seemed clear, but in the end, she and Chris Barber were both convicted of mischief.

00:02:56.120 I understand she's likely to appeal, so there is a chance it'll be overturned, but how demoralizing did that feel?

00:03:03.320 We shouldn't be too down in the dumps, though, because every time we do win, it's an enormous step forward, not just for the legal battle itself, but for the hope that the courts can undo some of the worst of politicians.

00:03:15.960 I point, for example, to the courts declaring that the invocation of the Emergencies Act during the Trucker Convoy was illegal and unconstitutional.

00:03:26.380 I think that in most Canadians' mind, that Emergencies Act was like the mountains. It was just there. You couldn't argue about it.

00:03:34.540 But the federal court said, no, that whole thing was illegal, and all the fruits from that tree were poisoned.

00:03:41.040 So, for example, the hundreds of Canadians whose bank accounts were seized, that was all put back into play when it was declared unconstitutional.

00:03:49.020 And the reason I tell you these things is because just now is a win, a win I did not expect, a win I would not have expected.

00:03:59.920 And it's an important win at an important level of court.

00:04:02.540 I'm talking about the recent unanimous decision by the Ontario Court of Appeal to overturn the conviction of former politician Randy Hillier for illegally participating in a political protest during the lockdowns.

00:04:19.240 I thought for sure he lost, and he did lose at the lower level.

00:04:24.680 Randy Hillier is a prickly fella.

00:04:26.840 He's the kind of guy that courts like to smack down.

00:04:29.540 He lost in the first instance. Appeals are always a long shot.

00:04:33.940 But he won.

00:04:35.440 Joining us now to talk about it is the head of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, our friend John Carpe.

00:04:40.660 John, welcome to the show, and congratulations.

00:04:43.440 Hey, glad to be with you.

00:04:45.320 John, I couldn't believe it.

00:04:46.860 I mean, Randy Hillier is a handful.

00:04:48.700 I mean, I love the guy, but he's a bit much sometimes.

00:04:51.360 And I think judges, they're just flesh and bone, and sometimes they react to a party like Randy Hillier, and a little bit of politics seeps into their judgment.

00:05:03.440 Randy has always been an outsider.

00:05:05.600 He's always been, I think he would declare himself to be radical.

00:05:09.760 He leans into confrontations, you could say.

00:05:13.580 And I'm not saying these things in a negative light.

00:05:16.340 I suppose I have some of those instincts, too.

00:05:18.140 Tell us a little bit about the story, because I still can't believe it.

00:05:21.420 I read, I sat down, I started to read the Court of Appeal ruling, and I was just amazed.

00:05:25.600 Give us the background, if you would.

00:05:28.240 Well, your Ontario viewers and listeners will remember in April and May of 2021, the government imposed a total ban on peaceful outdoor protests.

00:05:40.620 Total ban.

00:05:41.280 It was illegal.

00:05:42.200 Even two people could not get together for a political protest.

00:05:46.300 The law prohibiting large gatherings for weddings and funerals and religious services was also utterly unscientific and very harsh.

00:05:58.460 You could have no more than 10 people at a wedding or funeral or religious service.

00:06:02.880 But for political protests, it wasn't even, not even 10 people were allowed, zero people were allowed.

00:06:09.240 And so, as you mentioned, we lost at trial.

00:06:14.060 But the Court of Appeal unanimously said that the total ban was an unjustified violation of the charter rights and, in particular, freedom of peaceful assembly, which is Section 2C of the charter.

00:06:32.620 And this is actually the first time that an appellate-level court has talked about what the freedom means, what it entails, that it's different from freedoms of expression and association and religion and conscience.

00:06:46.460 And so, we've got brand new law on this, and it was unanimous.

00:06:52.520 One of the three judges had actually issued a terrible ruling against religious freedom in this other Trinity Bible Chapel decision.

00:07:01.240 And yet, she was on this panel.

00:07:02.900 Unanimous panel said that the total ban on peaceful outdoor protests was an unjustified violation of the charter freedom of peaceful assembly.

00:07:11.960 Yeah, you know what?

00:07:13.620 I read it, and I found it bracing.

00:07:15.920 This one line I'm quoting from memory, the judges say, even in an emergency, the charter does not fade from view.

00:07:21.980 I'm paraphrasing, which is encouraging because I think a lot of Canadians said, oh, it's emergency.

00:07:27.860 It's a pandemic.

00:07:28.820 It's the Emergencies Act.

00:07:30.340 The Charter of Rights doesn't apply.

00:07:31.780 That's not true.

00:07:32.540 There's no pandemic exception to the charter.

00:07:35.780 There's no emergencies exception to the charter.

00:07:39.400 It applies in every instance.

00:07:42.220 I bet you most Canadians, including I bet you most judges and lawyers, their first instinct would be, oh, no, we have to suspend those constitutional rights because we're in a crisis.

00:07:51.880 We're in a COVID crisis.

00:07:53.460 We're in a tariff crisis.

00:07:55.380 We're in a climate crisis.

00:07:57.360 They'd love to keep us in crises if it could suspend our civil liberties. 0.99

00:08:01.100 When there's a huge difference as well, if there was some big temporary thing, maybe some huge forest fire or military uprising, if there was something that was temporary, maybe you can give governments a bit more latitude.

00:08:20.300 The thing about these lockdown measures and vaccine passports is they went on for years. 0.68

00:08:25.820 We're talking April and May of 2021.

00:08:29.020 The government's own data has made it abundantly clear to anybody who bothers to look at it that COVID is not an unusually deadly killer.

00:08:36.860 We're all entitled to our own opinions.

00:08:39.660 We're not entitled to our own facts.

00:08:41.680 And the government's data show that COVID was a bad annual flu.

00:08:46.760 And yet we still have all this fear mongering.

00:08:49.320 And here we are in April and May of 2021.

00:08:52.180 So we're 13 months in.

00:08:54.780 And so, you know, as you said, you can't keep on declaring an emergency for things that are in place for literally for years.

00:09:05.540 What I like best about the judgment was just the attitude behind it.

00:09:09.020 You can feel the attitude that these three judges on this panel, in this ruling, they care about charter freedoms.

00:09:16.400 And it seems to be a step towards returning to having a high standard whereby it's difficult for governments to violate charter freedoms,

00:09:25.720 as opposed to what we've seen so much of in the last few years is this lowering of the bar where governments can just kind of do whatever they want,

00:09:34.920 as long as they're claiming that there's some sort of an emergency out there.

00:09:38.400 You know, I feel like the passage of time has brought the judiciary or at least parts of it back to sobriety.

00:09:44.600 And I think that, let's be honest, some of them panicked as much as anyone else.

00:09:49.200 I mean, I suppose in their defense, they're human.

00:09:51.660 And the average judge is probably 60 or 70 years old, as opposed to someone who's young.

00:09:57.760 So they probably would have encountered more people who did actually get really sick or die from the flu.

00:10:03.980 I mean, that's what it's like to be 70.

00:10:06.180 By nature, if you're a judge, you're a law follower.

00:10:09.540 You're an authority believer.

00:10:11.460 There's not a lot of deep skeptics on the bench.

00:10:15.960 By nature, you are a cog in the machine.

00:10:20.520 And I think in those early months and years, there was almost nothing the authorities couldn't do that a judge wouldn't rubber stamp.

00:10:27.700 But for this ruling to come out now in April, four years after the events in question,

00:10:33.860 I think the judges have had a chance to maybe, you know, get out of the mania of it.

00:10:41.140 It was a mass mania.

00:10:44.120 What was the phrase?

00:10:44.840 A mass formation, you know.

00:10:47.480 Mass psychosis.

00:10:48.600 Yeah.

00:10:48.900 Yeah.

00:10:49.300 And, you know, there's the mob mentality.

00:10:53.880 And I think that I wouldn't call the judges a mob mentality, but there was a group panic.

00:11:02.180 There was a group panic.

00:11:02.860 A moral panic.

00:11:04.100 And I think four years later, the judges are sort of shaking themselves awake and saying, whoa, did that all just happen?

00:11:12.920 I don't know.

00:11:13.780 I guess I'm trying to explain why this good news comes so late.

00:11:18.980 And I think the lateness is one of the reasons it's good news.

00:11:21.960 What do you think?

00:11:22.540 Well, I think the passage of time is definitely, you know, we're not getting bombarded every hour of every day by government funded media proclaiming the false message that COVID is an unusually deadly killer, when in fact it was not.

00:11:38.480 It was certainly real and certainly a threat to a small minority of the population.

00:11:43.400 But the media propaganda was false.

00:11:45.940 And I agree with your analysis.

00:11:47.340 If you're older and you tend to be more law abiding, you know, the judges would be in the demographic.

00:11:53.540 That said, there's just no excuse for writing a media narrative into your court ruling when it's not supported by the evidence.

00:12:01.200 We would not put up with that for, let's say, a murder trial.

00:12:05.340 Somebody's accused of murder.

00:12:06.740 Right.

00:12:07.120 And the media makes it out like the guy's guilty as sin.

00:12:10.100 And then, you know, comes before the judge.

00:12:11.960 The judge is expected to disregard all of the media coverage and look only at the evidence before the court and then either convict or acquit the accused person of the crime.

00:12:22.380 And we would be outraged if the judge simply wrote the media narrative into his court ruling.

00:12:28.360 And yet this is what judges did with the COVID.

00:12:31.240 They wrote false media narrative speaking points into their court rulings that were not supported by evidence that was placed before the court.

00:12:41.180 So, you know, we're all human.

00:12:43.220 We all make mistakes.

00:12:44.140 But we don't learn from our mistakes unless they are recognized and owned up to.

00:12:50.480 You know, it's funny because judges, I think, can be extremely skeptical of government power when it's a prosecutor in a criminal setting.

00:12:58.880 In fact, I think a lot of Canadians would think judges are too skeptical and too willing to throw away the government's authority.

00:13:04.960 Whereas when it's a public health officer, the judges were extremely obedient, I think, to the point of being naive.

00:13:14.240 It reminds me, I don't know if you know the experiments by Stanley Milgram in the 60s.

00:13:19.920 The very famous experiment where someone wearing a white doctor's lab coat with a clipboard, that's so essential that they have the lab coat and the clipboard, told people to give an electric shock to someone in the adjacent room if they got questions wrong.

00:13:45.640 Now, it turned out it was an actor in the other room, but in the Milgram experiment, the person in the white coat said, you have to give them the electric shock now.

00:13:56.420 And the actor would scream as if they were in pain.

00:13:58.600 Yeah, and turn the machine up every time they got someone wrong.

00:14:02.920 So it started out with, ow, and then ow, and then screaming, and then eventually silence as if they had gone unconscious.

00:14:09.540 It's a very famous experiment, and I encourage you to look it up, John, if you don't know it, because all the person in the lab coat could say, they couldn't give any rationale, couldn't explain it, couldn't say there's any consequences.

00:14:24.640 Just the raw assertion of authority, you must do this.

00:14:28.600 You have no choice.

00:14:30.220 You have to do this.

00:14:31.160 That's a very important part of the Milgram experiment, is that it's not do this or else or do this because.

00:14:38.060 It's just someone in a white lab coat with a clipboard who is in a position of authority tells you to do something that you know is wrong, but they assert it so forcefully just through raw power.

00:14:49.240 And the number of Americans who complied with the Milgram experiment was shockingly high.

00:14:54.980 So I think the judges fell for a giant Milgram experiment because what is Canada's top doctor, British Columbia's top doctor?

00:15:05.240 What are they, the top doctor in terms of patient care, in terms of bedside manner, in terms of research?

00:15:11.120 No, they're not top doctors.

00:15:12.700 They're just government doctors who probably haven't seen a patient in years.

00:15:16.380 I don't know if Theresa Tam has ever seen a patient.

00:15:19.500 Top doctors say.

00:15:20.500 So they come in with a white lab coat and a clipboard and tell you to do something.

00:15:24.300 The Milgram experiment says many people will go along with it.

00:15:28.940 I think the judges fell for a massive case of the Milgram experiment.

00:15:34.920 That's a good theory and it's plausible.

00:15:39.380 Corrupted by fear is similar.

00:15:41.260 That's a thesis in my book, which like yours, it's not provable, but it's kind of a guess of what's going on.

00:15:49.500 They were as terrified of the virus as what most other Canadians were.

00:15:55.380 The other experiment that was interesting, I'm sure, I forget the name of it, but I'm sure you're familiar with it, where there's a group of people and when there's three or four people giving an incorrect answer to, that's obviously false.

00:16:10.300 The Ash conformity test.

00:16:12.020 That's a conformity test.

00:16:13.580 Yeah, two plus two equals five, right?

00:16:16.320 And you know it's false, but then there's everybody, you know, is that the correct answer?

00:16:20.560 And it's like, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

00:16:22.640 And then most people, when it's their turn, they know that the other four people got it wrong, but they also say, yeah, that's correct.

00:16:28.680 But if there's one other person in the room that says, no, that's false, then the percentages change drastically.

00:16:37.960 So there's a group thing as well, like people and judges are human.

00:16:42.140 They don't want to be the odd man out.

00:16:43.680 You know, the only guy or the only gal at the judge's cafeteria that's saying, hey, these lockdowns are very harmful and they're not grounded in science and it's not possible to stop the spread of a virus.

00:16:53.860 They don't want to be the odd man out to say these things.

00:16:56.400 You know, I love studying that ASH conformity test.

00:17:00.780 And during the lockdowns, by the way, we played, let me show you, I won't play too much.

00:17:05.480 Here's a two minute video of sort of a reenactment of the ASH conformity test that shows the power of wanting to fit in and peer pressure.

00:17:14.460 Take a quick look at this.

00:17:15.320 This video, John, we must have played this at our Rebel News headquarters 10 times during the pandemic.

00:17:21.880 And I'll tell you why in a second.

00:17:23.320 Take a look.

00:17:23.680 But an experiment is not a public opinion.

00:17:26.400 Paul, it examines behavior under the pressure of social forces, as the experiment of Solomon

00:17:31.620 Ash reveals.

00:17:32.860 The experiment you'll be taking part in today involves the perception of lengths of lines.

00:17:38.100 As you can see here, I have a number of cards.

00:17:40.760 And on each card, there are several lines.

00:17:43.580 Your task is a very simple one.

00:17:45.040 You're to look at the line on the left and determine which of the three lines on the right is equal to it in length.

00:17:50.260 All right, we'll proceed in this order.

00:17:52.640 You'll give your answer.

00:17:53.220 Only one of the people in the group is a real subject, the fifth person with the white t-shirt.

00:17:58.320 The others are confederates of the experimenter and have been told to give wrong answers on some of the trials.

00:18:04.360 The experiment begins uneventfully as subjects give their judgments.

00:18:07.800 Two, two, two, two, two, two, three, three, three, three, three.

00:18:19.800 But on the third trial, something happens.

00:18:22.140 Two, two, two, two, two, two, two.

00:18:33.320 The subject denies the evidence of his own eyes and yields to group influence.

00:18:39.540 Ash found subjects went along with the group on 37% of the critical trials.

00:18:44.780 But he found through interviews that they went along with the group for different reasons.

00:18:49.240 One.

00:18:51.880 One.

00:18:52.760 They must be right.

00:18:53.960 There are four of them and one of me.

00:18:55.400 One.

00:18:56.900 This subject's yielding is based on a distortion of his judgment.

00:19:00.580 He genuinely believes that the group is correct.

00:19:04.800 One.

00:19:06.580 One.

00:19:08.740 One.

00:19:09.880 Two.

00:19:12.460 One.

00:19:15.080 Two.

00:19:17.620 Two.

00:19:19.240 Two.

00:19:20.860 I know they're wrong, but why should I make waves?

00:19:23.660 Two.

00:19:24.620 In this case, the subject knows he is right, but goes along to avoid the discomfort of disagreeing with the group.

00:19:30.300 The reason we played that video is the point you made at the end there, John, is conformity was about 30, 35%.

00:19:36.660 But when there was one other truth teller in the group, conformity fell to, I think, 5%.

00:19:42.340 As in, you knew you weren't alone, so it gave you courage.

00:19:46.000 And during the worst of the pandemic, during the worst of the lockdowns, I felt like the role of Rebel News was to let people know they weren't alone, to let them know they weren't crazy, let them know that although they were subject to tremendous peer pressure, there were others in the resistance.

00:20:02.180 And I think to study the Milgram experiment and the Ash conformity test are two extremely important things. 0.57

00:20:09.520 All right.

00:20:09.740 Thank you for letting me go down that little tangent.

00:20:12.160 Those are actually some of my favorite things in the world to talk about because I think they explain so much.

00:20:17.240 Back to the court ruling.

00:20:20.080 So this was a ruling by the three-person panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal.

00:20:25.060 And because it's at that level, that means every trial court, every trial judge in the province is bound by this precedent.

00:20:33.360 It's not just persuasive.

00:20:35.060 It is binding.

00:20:36.040 So the fact that Randy Hillier lost at trial, which would have seemed devastating, I imagine, but he won in the Court of Appeal was actually a blessing in disguise because now the good news is in effect across the entire province, I guess, until the Supreme Court were to overturn it, which I don't think they will.

00:20:58.720 So it was actually fortuitous, even if you didn't know it at the time, that you lost in the first round, right?

00:21:03.540 Yeah, it's a very strong message that governments cannot place a total ban.

00:21:09.260 Now, what's interesting, and I don't want to kind of rain on our parade today, but if the government had limited outdoor protests to only 10 people, you know, on par with weddings and funerals and religious ceremonies and said, you can have a political protest with up to 10 people outdoors, probably and sadly, because that's utterly unscientific.

00:21:31.540 I mean, COVID wasn't the threat that the government-funded media made it out to be in the first place.

00:21:36.780 So that already means that all of these measures were not justified because the threat itself was not the threat that the media exaggerated it to be.

00:21:47.100 But if the Ontario government had said, look, 10-person limit on political protests, if Randy Hillier had challenged that, and I would venture a guess that the protests that he organized and at which he spoke were more than 10 people, he probably would have lost.

00:22:04.720 But it's still nice to see a court, you know, especially a pellet-level court, it's just nice to see a court recognize the importance of a charter freedom and actually take it seriously and elaborate on it, what it means and what the nature of it is, why it's important.

00:22:23.420 Interesting point here, the court said that social media and Zoom meetings and virtual gatherings are not an adequate or satisfactory substitute for in-person gatherings.

00:22:38.080 And that it's very important for people to be able to protest together in person and to have that sense of awareness and presence of each other.

00:22:46.840 So this is a very thoughtful analysis on freedom of peaceful assembly, which in the last 42 years of the charter's history, beyond a passing sentence here or there, no court has actually issued a substantive ruling about what this freedom means.

00:23:04.940 In contrast to the other ones, you know, association, you know, lengthy, lengthy judgments, this is the first judgment that kind of illuminates what freedom of peaceful assembly is all about.

00:23:18.660 And so that's very valuable as well to finally get that on the books.

00:23:22.700 Wow, that's great. I didn't know it had never been reviewed by judges before.

00:23:26.380 This makes me think of a case that, you know, Rebel News took a lot of cases, civil liberties cases during the pandemic in Canada.

00:23:34.940 But we also did a few in Australia and in the United Kingdom.

00:23:39.520 And there was one, I just got to tell you about it, John, where a city councilor near Glasgow, so he was on city council himself, but he so objected to his fellow councillors' lockdownism that he had a little protest outside his own city hall.

00:23:55.880 Like, what a character. His name was Paddy Hogg.

00:23:58.560 And, oh, they did not like that.

00:24:01.820 So not only did they charge him with breaking the lockdown rule, they charged him with reckless endangerment, saying that he could have effectively murdered someone if they got the Rona.

00:24:15.760 And they hired experts and they were trying to put Paddy Hogg away for years.

00:24:22.420 Like, reckless endangerment, our Scottish lawyer said, would be like if, God forbid, you went over an overpass on a highway and dropped a rock on a car below, the kind of thing that could literally kill someone, like an extremely serious charge.

00:24:35.440 That's what they were trying to shoehorn Paddy Hogg into because he had a peaceful protest outside his own city council.

00:24:42.540 They dropped it on the eve of trial.

00:24:45.520 But it just goes to show how, you know, in the crisis, politicians will go to extreme lengths.

00:24:54.060 And it wasn't just the politicians, it was prosecutors and police.

00:24:57.820 And I don't know, it's very worrisome.

00:25:01.260 I've seen this same outcome in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, not a lot in the United States.

00:25:10.480 They didn't have it as badly there.

00:25:12.740 But there was some deep demonic thing that came out during the pandemic.

00:25:20.880 And it fell to cranky, prickly porcupines like Randy Hillier to push back.

00:25:26.740 I mean, Randy is a rough, around the edges kind of guy.

00:25:29.900 I have an admiration for him, but he's prickly.

00:25:33.560 And I think sometimes we don't realize how much we need those prickly people because they're the canaries in the coal mine. 0.98

00:25:42.120 They're the ones who get in trouble first.

00:25:44.060 But they're, you know, as they say, it's better to fight in the first ditch than the last.

00:25:48.460 In a way, Randy Hillier was fighting for all of us, wasn't he?

00:25:51.960 Oh, absolutely he was.

00:25:53.100 It's been said that the reasonable people, they go along to get along or get along to go along, however that saying goes.

00:26:01.780 But reasonable people go with the flow and they accommodate themselves to fit in with reality.

00:26:09.240 Unreasonable people do not go with the flow and they're the ones who change the world.

00:26:14.240 Now, you can get unreasonable people that can be for good or for evil.

00:26:17.240 You can change the world for good or for evil, but it's important that you have people like Randy Hillier.

00:26:24.080 And likewise, I don't know him very well.

00:26:27.360 We've met a number of times over the years.

00:26:29.760 I happen to be in Ontario speaking at a landowner's property rights conference or event when he announced that he was running for the provincial progressive conservative nomination.

00:26:42.780 So, I admire him and I appreciate him and, you know, whatever faults he has.

00:26:49.780 It's people like Randy Hillier and I would say people like Ezra Levant and perhaps John Carpe.

00:26:54.700 You know, you have to be unreasonable when you're facing tyranny and injustice and when you're facing laws that are based on lies rather than being based on truth and reality and science.

00:27:07.660 You know, you know, we have to be unreasonable.

00:27:10.340 So, I'm very grateful.

00:27:12.580 And Randy's taken a great personal risk here because he was charged with organizing outdoor protests in Kemptville and Cornwall.

00:27:22.020 That's two plus participating in protests in Smiths Falls, Belleville, Peterborough, Stratford, Kitchener and Chatham.

00:27:29.640 So, he, with up to $100,000 in fines, I mean, he could have been, this is a practical benefit.

00:27:37.560 I anticipate that the Crown prosecutors are going to drop their charges because this health order has now been found to be an unjustified violation of the Charter Freedom of Peaceful Assembly.

00:27:50.360 But Randy Hillier risked a half a million, three quarters of a million dollars in fines.

00:27:56.300 And, you know, that takes courage.

00:27:58.140 Ah, so, so there were other matters pending in the same vein is what you're saying.

00:28:04.200 Yeah, what, what the, what the Justice Center's lawyers did, there were all these charges all over the place.

00:28:08.960 And rather than, you know, raising the constitutional issue in, in seven or 27 different cases, we filed one notice of application for one ruling.

00:28:20.380 And then with the idea that that's going to apply to all of the charges that Randy Hillier was facing.

00:28:26.380 And I hope it will benefit other people in Ontario as well.

00:28:29.580 I hope it'll be a repeat, like in, in Alberta, where the Justice Center's lawyers secured a court ruling, the Ingram ruling in July of 2023,

00:28:38.760 whereby the court ruled that Alberta's lockdown measures were illegal and struck them down.

00:28:44.120 And after that, the Crown prosecutors stopped prosecuting good people like Pastor Tim Stevens and Fairview Baptist Church and No More Lockdowns, Rodeo, et cetera, et cetera.

00:28:56.700 So I hope that'll be the case in Ontario as well, that we're going to see the prosecutors back off.

00:29:01.840 Yeah, I suppose it's possible that the prosecutors seek leave from the Supreme Court of Canada to appeal.

00:29:12.760 Now, this, you don't have a right to command the Supreme Court to hear your appeal.

00:29:17.380 You have to ask them.

00:29:18.320 And they only take about, I think, about 10% of cases, if I'm, you correct me if I'm wrong on that, John.

00:29:24.400 They only take cases where they think there's a real compelling public interest, or maybe the court of appeal of one province says something, the court of appeal of another province says something else.

00:29:34.500 And they're basically asked to rationalize these two different diverging paths.

00:29:38.800 I would imagine it's very unlikely that this will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

00:29:43.380 What do you think?

00:29:45.000 I would, I try not to make guesses and predictions, but I'll stick my neck out and say, if the Ontario government appeals this to the Supreme Court of Canada, I think the Supreme Court would refuse to hear it.

00:29:58.440 It's a fairly clear, simple, direct, straightforward ruling.

00:30:02.420 And it's unanimous too.

00:30:03.900 That's also a factor.

00:30:04.920 Like if there was a very strong dissenting opinion, maybe the Supreme Court would have more interest.

00:30:10.140 But it's locked down.

00:30:11.960 Sorry, that's a bad choice of words.

00:30:14.720 But really, it's quite something, you know, the point you made earlier, that there was no room whatsoever.

00:30:22.140 You couldn't even have one other person with you is so absurd.

00:30:27.420 And I think that's why it failed, as you pointed out, because it was so extreme.

00:30:30.960 And had they allowed 10 people, a judge might have said, well, there was enough wiggle room to let you have your freedom.

00:30:38.000 So the obstinacy of the government is what undid them, I guess.

00:30:43.620 Indeed.

00:30:44.100 And the court wrote in the ruling in one passage, and it's not an exact quote, but, you know, we cannot tolerate having a government completely ignore a fundamental freedom.

00:30:59.780 That's just not acceptable to completely ignore it.

00:31:02.080 So in other words, the Ontario government did consider religious freedom when they placed restrictions on religious freedom.

00:31:08.740 Right.

00:31:09.660 They did consider, but when it came to the freedom of peaceful assembly, they gave no consideration to it at all.

00:31:17.400 And so the Ontario Court of Appeals said, this is just not acceptable for a government to have no regard.

00:31:25.640 So it's just really positive to get a win.

00:31:29.200 At the same time, our work is cut out for us, because I can tell you if peaceful protests for up to 10 people had been permitted by the Ontario government,

00:31:39.780 and it's hypothetical, obviously, but I don't think Randy Hillier would have won his case.

00:31:47.000 So we still have a lot of work to do in the courts to secure recognition that the judiciary has really let us down in the last few years

00:31:56.860 by writing the media narrative into their court rulings and by failing to consider the abundant evidence placed before courts

00:32:05.820 about all the harms that lockdowns were doing.

00:32:08.160 There's not a single court ruling yet in Canada where the judge has actually thoroughly gone through all of the lockdown harms

00:32:16.260 and then thoroughly looked at whether there are, in fact, benefits, and then balanced the two

00:32:22.320 and then said, you know what, the lockdown benefits exceed lockdown harms.

00:32:27.820 No judge has yet made such an analysis in any Canadian court ruling.

00:32:32.940 So we certainly have our work cut out for us when you have courts that are not doing their job by measuring harms and benefits as they're required to do.

00:32:46.320 Yeah.

00:32:46.980 Well, John, I'm really glad that the JCCF is out there fighting for freedom.

00:32:50.720 And you were the first guys out there in the public interest law space fighting for freedom.

00:32:58.860 And thank goodness you've been doing that.

00:33:02.460 And congratulations to you on this win.

00:33:04.700 And thanks for spending the last half hour with us, walking us through it.

00:33:08.100 And I didn't read through the entire case.

00:33:10.520 I got through about half of it before I had to put it aside.

00:33:13.900 But I really enjoyed reading those judges talk about how you can't ignore the Constitution in a crisis.

00:33:20.900 That made me feel better to read it.

00:33:22.940 It gave me a tiny bit more hope in our country.

00:33:25.800 And I sure needed that, John.

00:33:28.820 Pleasure to be on your show today.

00:33:30.440 Right on.

00:33:30.880 There you have it.

00:33:31.320 John Carpe.

00:33:32.000 He's the boss of the Justice Center.

00:33:35.020 Well, that's our show for today.

00:33:36.780 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

00:33:42.200 good night.

00:33:43.400 And keep fighting for freedom.

00:33:44.560 Thank you.

Rebel News Podcast - April 10, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Randy Hillier's big win： JCCF helps former MPP win major legal victory over lockdown tyranny

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