Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Steven Guilbeault pays his debts with just days to spare — using other people’s money!

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. I finally, finally got it. Stephen Gilbeau, that deadbeat,

00:00:06.980 finally paid his $20,000 fine to me, but he didn't use his own money. I'll show you what he did.

00:00:14.120 But first, let me invite you to get the video version of this podcast. Go to rebelnewsplus.com.

00:00:18.840 Click subscribe. Eight bucks a month. That might not be a lot of dough to you, but boy,

00:00:22.580 it's a lot to us. It really adds up. It's how we pay our bills. Go to rebelnewsplus.com.

00:00:27.400 Eight dollars a month. Here's today's podcast.

00:00:34.820 Tonight, Stephen Gilbeau pays his debts with just days to spare, but he uses other people's money.

00:00:42.980 It's December 6th, and this is the S. Levant Show.

00:00:48.320 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:00:57.400 In the spring of 2021, that's almost three years ago, Stephen Gilbeau, then the Heritage

00:01:06.360 Minister, blocked me on Twitter. And at the same time, Catherine McKenna, then Trudeau's Environment

00:01:11.920 Minister, if I recall, she did the same thing as Sheila Gunn-Reed, our chief reporter. Now,

00:01:16.520 you may not be on Twitter, so this might not sound like anything important to you. What's Twitter,

00:01:22.460 other than some time-wasting app on your phone for—it makes you stare at your phone for hours

00:01:27.740 quarreling with strangers? I mean, who cares in a way? Fair enough. But I saw it differently. In

00:01:33.640 politics, Twitter is the new public square. It's the new town hall. Every politician is on Twitter.

00:01:40.560 Announcements are often made first on Twitter. It's so instant. It's so huge and global. Donald

00:01:45.620 Trump, as president, was a master of Twitter. He would send messages to other world leaders in a few

00:01:50.920 sentences that cut through all the diplomatic niceties in a way the world had never seen before.

00:01:56.820 But it's a two-way street, which is what I love about it. We don't just get to listen to leaders

00:02:01.960 and newsmakers like Trump and, frankly, 90 percent of world leaders, but we get to clap back at them

00:02:08.300 if we want. And sometimes they interact with us, and we can watch them interact amongst each other.

00:02:14.860 It's a dramatic theater. Sometimes it's very funny. Sometimes it's very sad. In the past two months,

00:02:19.600 Twitter, especially under Elon Musk's guidance to become a free speech platform,

00:02:25.520 it's been a source of a lot of primary information about the war between Israel and Hamas,

00:02:30.600 information about the atrocities committed by those terrorists that would have been censored in other

00:02:35.780 forums. On Twitter, you could actually watch the terrorists celebrate their barbarity. The very first

00:02:42.700 tweet I saw about the October 7th massacre was from the Ayatollah of Iran himself, incredibly.

00:02:48.380 Whereas the mainstream media won't even call Hamas a terrorist group. So Twitter is so important for

00:02:54.880 news and public affairs, and to correct the establishment, it's an alternative source of

00:02:59.460 information. I mean, before Twitter, for example, how would you know that this CTV broadcast by Omar

00:03:06.260 Satchadina, how would you know it was a lie? In Ottawa, thousands of Jewish Canadians rallied on

00:03:11.600 Parliament Hill in support of the war. While inside Parliament, Palestinian Canadians made a plea for

00:03:17.580 help. Here's CTV's Judy Trinh. 1.00

00:03:24.080 Underneath the peace tower, a call for the release of hostages and an end to anti-Semitism in a show

00:03:30.680 of unwavering support for Israel.

00:03:33.140 That was a lie. As you know, I was there at that rally, and it was actually a call for peace and a

00:03:38.540 call for the return of the hostages. CTV lied. And if it weren't for social media, especially Twitter,

00:03:44.880 most people in Canada would have no other choice, really, but to accept that lie. How would they know

00:03:49.780 any differently? So Twitter is an essential tool for knowing about the world. It's much bigger than just

00:03:56.120 politics. It's sports and entertainment and comedy and celebrities and movies. It's a hundred things,

00:04:02.800 but it is essential for public life and politics, which brings me back to the reason we sued Stephen

00:04:08.060 Gilbeau and Catherine McKenna for blocking me and Sheila two and a half years ago. To be clear, we're not

00:04:12.840 talking about them blocking us on their personal Twitter accounts. They blocked us on their government

00:04:18.060 Twitter accounts, the one where they do government business like issue press releases and make government

00:04:23.820 announcements and interact with other government figures. The government Twitter accounts owned

00:04:28.840 by the government of Canada run by staff paid for by the government of Canada. That's what I'm talking

00:04:33.020 about. Gilbeau and McKenna had no more right to ban us from their Twitter account than to ban us

00:04:40.480 from visiting the government of Canada's website or phoning the government or walking into a government

00:04:46.660 of Canada office. They may hate us at Rebel News, and that's their right, I suppose, but they cannot use

00:04:52.540 the resources and the services of the government of Canada to block and ban and retaliate against us

00:04:58.300 just because they hate us. I know that's what authoritarian leftists want to do, but we still

00:05:04.640 have some constitutional rights here in Canada, so we sued. You can see a copy of our lawsuit at

00:05:10.820 twitterlawsuit.ca. We sued in the Federal Court of Canada, and the government fought back and fought back

00:05:18.560 hard. Gilbeau and McKenna didn't defend themselves. What I mean by that is they had the government of

00:05:25.260 Canada defend them. They didn't reach into their own pockets for lawyers, which immediately shows that

00:05:30.600 something was a bit off. If these really were their private Twitter accounts, which they claimed,

00:05:35.860 why would the government have to defend them? You can't really claim that they were personal Twitter

00:05:41.280 accounts, but then make the government, that is taxpayers, defend you. But they dug in for two full years,

00:05:49.240 for two years they fought us, denying that they were government accounts, denying that we had a

00:05:53.640 right to see what they were publishing, denying that we had any right to access that information at all.

00:05:59.060 They made our lawyers fly all the way to Toronto to battle them in federal court, but then our lawyers

00:06:04.020 showed the judge a very simple thing. You see that little gray check mark next to Gilbeau's name?

00:06:09.860 If you hover over it, you'll see it means government Twitter account. That's what the gray check mark means.

00:06:17.520 We showed that gray check mark to the judge, and the government spent the day trying to argue that

00:06:23.140 that evidence should not be admitted. Can you believe that? Well, the judge allowed the evidence, and

00:06:29.380 faced with certain defeat, Gilbeau finally relented and agreed to unblock us. Now, by this point,

00:06:35.660 the case had gone on for so long, Catherine McKenna had actually quit politics, so we dropped the

00:06:40.320 lawsuit against her. No one really cares what she has to say on her own. It was always her government 0.90

00:06:44.360 status that gave her power and relevance. Now, my point is, after fighting tooth and nail for two

00:06:50.180 years, Stephen Gilbeau finally collapsed and admitted what we had all along known, and so the federal court

00:06:57.080 issued what's called a consent order. Gilbeau was ordered to keep me unblocked for the rest of his

00:07:05.160 entire career as an MP, and he was ordered to stop anyone else, such as staff, from blocking me.

00:07:12.060 And as a recognition of the BS that he put us through, he had to pay us $20,000 in costs.

00:07:17.380 As you can see, this order was issued on September 11th, and he was given 90 days to pay.

00:07:23.880 Now, I should tell you, $20,000 in costs is a huge cost order, but two years of litigation,

00:07:28.980 including our lawyers flying into Toronto to attend court to argue over that little great checkmark,

00:07:33.960 it cost us closer to $100,000. But still, it was an enormous victory. It's a small thing,

00:07:42.300 Twitter, but it was a big victory. Gilbeau was ordered to unblock us forever. It might not be a

00:07:48.520 binding precedent, which going to a full trial would have been, but it was a clear sign that the

00:07:54.680 court had no time for Gilbeau's absurd arguments, and even Gilbeau's lawyers knew it. They knew they

00:08:00.500 had run out of time. I think they were trying to tire us out. I think they thought we wouldn't be able

00:08:04.500 to keep up. And they knew that if they went to a full trial, they would have had the same bad results

00:08:09.920 and probably would have had to pay us even more money, and the judge would have had some very sharp

00:08:16.100 things to say, and they wanted to avoid that. Except Gilbeau wouldn't pay the $20,000.

00:08:22.440 The court order said he had to pay us $20,000 within 90 days of September 11th. 30 days went by,

00:08:31.840 no check. 65 days, no check. 75 days, 80 days. 90 days after September 11th, by the way, is December 10th,

00:08:44.640 which is this Sunday. So really, he had until this Friday, just two days from now, to pay,

00:08:50.320 because the weekend wouldn't work. But he didn't pay. A few days ago, our lawyer called his lawyers

00:08:58.260 to say, if Gilbeau didn't pay, if he violated this court order, we would go back to the judge

00:09:03.720 to ask for more relief. And who knows what that would have looked like. Would Gilbeau have been

00:09:08.940 found in contempt of court? Would a judge let us seize his assets to pay the $20,000 debt? That's what

00:09:15.320 would happen to a private citizen who lost in court but refused to pay a debt. Would we be able to

00:09:22.340 garnish his salary? Incredibly, Gilbeau's lawyer said they mailed the check, regular mail with a

00:09:29.260 regular stamp, but that it simply must have got lost in the mail. They actually said that. The dog

00:09:34.220 ate my homework. They had no tracking number for it. Here's a question. If you had to send over $20,000

00:09:39.900 to someone because of a court order, would you just put a stamp on it and drop it in a red mailbox

00:09:45.060 and hope for the best? What a clown. What a total mess he is. But it's already Wednesday. 0.99

00:09:52.520 He has 96 hours, but he really only has 48 hours because of the weekend.

00:09:57.220 Would he really break the law again? Remember, he's a convicted criminal, a Greenpeace extremist who was

00:10:04.280 convicted of breaking enter for an environmentalist stunt before he became an MP. Well, this morning I

00:10:12.260 got a note from our lawyer. The check finally showed up at our lawyer's office with just two days to

00:10:19.360 spare. Incredible. An incredible victory in a way, but a costly victory. The $20,000 was a nice touch,

00:10:27.320 but like I say, we were put through the paces for nearly $100,000 chasing Gilbeau. That's our side,

00:10:33.100 but remember the government had a bevy of lawyers there for Gilbeau and McKenna. If we spent nearly

00:10:38.800 $100,000, there is no way that the government spent less than a quarter million dollars of your tax money

00:10:44.860 pushing the lie that Gilbeau's Twitter account is not a public Twitter account. A quarter million tax

00:10:50.700 dollars only to surrender at the last moment and agree to unblock me, which he should have done in the

00:10:56.580 very beginning. What a disgrace he is. But here's what's so crazy. When I announced Gilbeau's consent 0.98

00:11:04.780 order, the punishment, and published the order online, millions of people, literally millions,

00:11:10.580 viewed those tweets and videos, and the vast majority of people celebrated our win. I think

00:11:15.900 people really hate Stephen Gilbeau, and with good reason. He's a socialist. He's an idiot. He's a convicted

00:11:20.640 criminal. But mainly, he wants to make their lives harder, poorer, smaller by taxing their carbon and

00:11:26.400 banning their plastic straws. All the while, he's jet-setting around the world. People hate a hypocrite.

00:11:32.880 Incredibly, despite seeing Gilbeau's meltdown and the court orders smacking him down, 0.99

00:11:37.540 three other Liberal cabinet ministers thought they would sign up for the same thing.

00:11:41.040 Seriously, after Gilbeau was ordered to unblock us and pay us, three more cabinet ministers,

00:11:47.040 Marcy Ian, Karina Gould, and Yaara Sachs, each of them thought it would be a really smart idea to

00:11:53.520 block us on Twitter, too, after Gilbeau was given the consent order. If you haven't heard of these

00:12:00.080 three cabinet ministers, you're not alone. They are women of low accomplishment. The most famous one 1.00

00:12:05.920 is Karina Gould, who made international headlines for posing with that Nazi SS officer, Yaroslav

00:12:11.680 Honka, when he came to parliament. So gross. And Yaara Sachs is, I think, tied with Seamus O'Regan 0.93

00:12:18.800 for being the dumbest MP in parliament. I don't know. I go back and forth on that contest all the time. 0.98

00:12:24.400 She actually gave life to the conspiracy theory that the trucker convoy honking their horns, that was

00:12:30.400 secret code for Heil Hitler. Honk honk meant Heil Hitler. She really said that. Remember this? 0.58

00:12:38.560 How much vitriol do we have to see of honk honk, which is an acronym for Hail Hitler, 0.65

00:12:45.280 do we need to see by these protesters on social media?

00:12:49.920 Yeah, so we're not dealing with the sharpest knives in the drawer here. But imagine blocking us

00:12:56.000 just moments after Gilbo was named and shamed by a judge for doing the same thing.

00:13:01.040 I mean, block us before, fine, that's rolling the dice. But Gilbo just lost, and you think it's a

00:13:07.360 good idea? So, so dumb. So what can we do but sue them too? The thing is, it was much easier this 1.00

00:13:16.960 time around. We already had the lawsuit written. We really just had to change a few of the details.

00:13:21.440 90% of the work was done. So we sued those three. I can't imagine they'll go through a two-year trial

00:13:27.120 fighting us. Hopefully they're not quite as stupid and wasteful as Stephen Gilbo was. But you never 1.00

00:13:31.760 know with liberals. I mean, hey, it's just taxpayers' money. But here's the thing. I mentioned we finally

00:13:37.920 got the check today, the $20,000, right at the last minute. But look at the check. Well, first,

00:13:45.280 first look at the lawsuit. The lawsuit named Stephen Gilbo, he claims it was a personal Twitter account.

00:13:53.040 That's what he said. And he personally is bound by the court order to keep us unbanned for the rest of

00:13:58.960 his career. Him personally. But look who paid the $20,000 for him. Look at the check we received this

00:14:07.600 morning. Hang on, hang on, hang on. It was Gilbo who blocked us. It was Gilbo who claimed it was his

00:14:14.240 personal account, not the government account. It was Gilbo who fought for two and a half years,

00:14:18.720 foisting the cost on taxpayers for his lawyers. It was Gilbo who was ordered to pay and ordered

00:14:24.400 not to block me again for the rest of his career. It was Gilbo. But look at the check. Look how the

00:14:31.440 money came. Gilbo didn't pay a cent. You did. Taxpayers did. Look at that check. It's from the

00:14:37.440 government of Canada. Stephen Gilbo swore to the court that the account was his and his loan. It

00:14:43.840 was his personally. It had nothing to do with the government. That, of course, was a lie,

00:14:48.080 which was obvious to anyone. It's why his lawyers fought so hard to stop us from showing that gray

00:14:53.760 check mark to the judge that proves Gilbo's a liar. But Gilbo said it was his and his alone. It was his

00:14:59.440 personally. So why is he sticking taxpayers for the bill? Stephen Gilbo is the one who blocked me.

00:15:05.920 He's the one who says it was him, not the government. So why is he shirking his debt? Why

00:15:12.160 is he passing the buck to taxpayers? Why do taxpayers have to pay for his fiasco? Why do you

00:15:20.000 have to pay for his lying and his stubbornness? What a little weasel he is. This is wrong. He's the 1.00

00:15:26.320 one we sued. He should pay for it. Don't you agree? And don't you think that he gets away with

00:15:33.280 shrugging off his debt to taxpayers? That other MPs, like those three fools who thought it would 1.00

00:15:39.040 be a good idea to copy Gilbo, Marcy Ian, Karina Gould, and Yara Sachs, if Gilbo gets to wiggle out 0.98

00:15:45.760 of this by sticking the tab to taxpayers, why wouldn't they also? Why wouldn't every MP in parliament

00:15:52.720 illegally block citizens? And if they get called on it, just make taxpayers bail them out. Whereas if

00:15:59.520 Gilbo has to pay his own debt himself, maybe he'll be less likely to violate the constitutional 1.00

00:16:06.240 rights of Canadian citizens in the future, and so will his stupider colleagues. 0.98

00:16:12.080 So I don't actually think this story is over, even though we got the check. 0.96

00:16:14.960 I think he has to pay the money back. And I think I should tweet at him, literally every day, as is

00:16:22.240 now my right to do. I think I should tweet to him every single day to pay the money back. And in fact,

00:16:29.680 I would ask you to join me. I've started a petition at paythemoneyback.ca. The petition

00:16:36.320 language is very simple. We, the undersigned, demand that Stephen Gilbo pay his own $20,000 penalty

00:16:42.240 and not pass it off to taxpayers. That's it. I'd like to get 20,000 people to sign it.

00:16:48.720 And then I'll do my best to actually hand it to that little weasel. I mean, seriously,

00:16:53.440 I've been to court. I win some and I lose some. When you lose, you grumble, but you pay your debts.

00:17:02.160 Why does this little weasel think he can pass off his debts onto taxpayers?

00:17:06.160 So go to my new petition at paythemoneyback.ca. Seriously, even in this final moment, Gilbo is

00:17:14.960 being a little weasel. I really think he needs to pay the money back. He caused this mess. He should

00:17:22.400 clean it up. Go to paythemoneyback.ca. And I promise to tweet at him every single day,

00:17:29.040 until he does. Stay with me for more.

00:17:42.560 Well, I remember the first case we took in what we would later call the Fight the Fines Project.

00:17:48.480 It actually turned out to be one of our most famous cases, that of Arthur Pawlowski.

00:17:52.240 He was doing what he always does on the weekends, having church services on the streets for homeless

00:17:57.680 people. And he doesn't just preach. He feeds people. And for some reason, the authorities hate

00:18:04.160 that. I don't know why. Maybe it's because his charity, his help for the lowliest among society,

00:18:09.920 shames them for not doing more. This is the video that I saw. This is very early weeks into the pandemic,

00:18:17.040 when cops were abusing his civil liberties, and using the lockdowns, and the mask rules,

00:18:23.200 and the anti-gathering rules as an excuse. Do you remember this footage of the cops pushing

00:18:28.560 around a pastor feeding the hungry? This is not events. This is not your picnic in the

00:18:34.960 neighborhood for the fun of it. We are providing necessities of life to those that you and your

00:18:42.880 bosses recuse to provide. You've got all kinds of events happening right now, and yet the

00:18:51.040 conqueror's finest are not bothering them. This is the hypocrisy of this city. This is the hypocrisy 0.70

00:18:59.360 of our wonderful fearless leaders. Where is the head named she? The mayor of this city. 0.95

00:19:05.600 Can you guys do the respectful social distancing? Stand back from me a little bit.

00:19:10.240 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I need eight feet. Stand back, okay? Or what? You're gonna f***ing 0.96

00:19:14.480 threaten me and f***ing abuse me. Hey, guys. Do not do that. Six feet. Tell him not to touch me. 0.99

00:19:20.000 Six feet away for everybody. That's for everybody. I saw that, and I was so mad, and I called up Pastor

00:19:26.480 Arthur, and I said, let me crowdfund a lawyer for you. And fightthefines.com was born.

00:19:35.280 And soon we had two clients, and five, and ten, and then we had a hundred. And I remember one day

00:19:39.840 in our staff meeting, I blurted out something. I couldn't help myself. I said, we're gonna take

00:19:44.960 a thousand cases. And everyone around said, oh, how are you gonna do that? And I didn't quite have

00:19:50.400 the answer. Well, here we are three and a half years later, and the Fight the Fines project, which grew

00:19:57.040 into the Democracy Fund, a registered Canadian charity dedicated to civil liberties,

00:20:04.160 it has taken three thousand cases, not just one thousand. And I gotta tell you, that day when I

00:20:12.080 blurted out, we're gonna take a thousand cases, in the back of my mind was that voice of regret

00:20:17.040 saying, you will regret this. How will you pay for a thousand trials? That's, you know, even if they're

00:20:22.960 just, just five thousand dollars each, that's five million bucks. How are you gonna ever do it?

00:20:28.800 But behind that little voice was a voice saying, build it and they will come, it'll work out. In fact,

00:20:36.880 the more cases you take, the more it will jam up the system. And it's one thing for the cops to hand

00:20:42.720 out a ticket. But it's another thing for a prosecutor and a judge and a clerk and a courthouse 0.83

00:20:49.200 to have an actual hearing. And will they really have a thousand or two thousand or three thousand

00:20:55.120 trials? And so what started off as perhaps an ambitious folly, take every case there is,

00:21:01.440 turned into a strategic strength. And here to talk about the results of that strategy,

00:21:08.320 some three and a half years later, is the head paralegal for the Democracy Fund, Jenna Little,

00:21:15.120 who joins us now via Skype from the Greater Toronto Area. Jenna, great to see you again.

00:21:19.600 And by the way, thank you for your outstanding work of saving and freeing thousands of Canadians.

00:21:27.920 Thank you, Ezra. So nice to see you again as well. And it's been our pleasure to run the

00:21:32.640 Fight the Finance campaign in Ontario and assist Ontarians with dealing with their tickets.

00:21:37.680 You mentioned Ontario because in Ontario, paralegals are allowed, they're accredited

00:21:42.240 by the courts to run a lot of trials, provincial offenses, which is what many of these pandemics

00:21:47.600 were. So the Democracy Fund has three full-time lawyers and you lead the team of four paralegals.

00:21:52.640 You and your fellow Democracy Fund paralegals, you have 1,300 cases in Ontario alone. Is that

00:22:00.160 accurate? Or at least you had those because you've been disposing of many of them. Is that an accurate count?

00:22:04.880 Yeah, I would say that's close. 1,300 to 1,500 total over the last couple of years.

00:22:10.160 That's amazing. So, I mean, I want to say thank you to you and congratulations to you and your team

00:22:15.760 who are just cutting through these like a hot knife through body because you're experts on it now. I mean,

00:22:20.560 no one in Canada has done as many of these as you and your team. But the other day you mentioned

00:22:26.320 something that I thought, boy, we've got to have Jenna Little on TV. She's got to talk about this and let 0.98

00:22:31.200 people know. I mean, you go in and you fight each case one at a time. You get disclosure from the

00:22:37.280 police. You know, you go through, you run a trial if necessary. But you mentioned that, I think you said

00:22:43.680 over 100 cases all at once were being dropped. And I thought, whoa, what's that about? How did that

00:22:51.920 happen? And it made me think of that strategic idea. If you flood the system, that alone will break it.

00:22:59.600 Tell me about this 100 or 110 cases. Well, we've been noticing over the past little while,

00:23:05.440 starting about in the summer last year, that in Mississauga, they've been putting a lot of

00:23:10.880 tickets onto withdrawal dockets. And the Mississauga court is where all the people with

00:23:15.840 Quarantine Act tickets from the Pearson Airport, that's where they go. So that poor court is just

00:23:21.920 flooded with these Quarantine Act charges. And so we've started noticing that they're putting them on

00:23:27.360 these secret dockets. And they don't send out a notice to the defendant. The only reason we find

00:23:32.240 out is because we check monthly to make sure that nobody slips through the cracks. And we started

00:23:37.040 noticing this trend. I don't mean to interrupt you, but just for our folks who might not know

00:23:43.200 the jargon, what exactly is a docket? Is it a list of court cases? That's really what a docket is?

00:23:49.440 Yes, that's exactly what it is. There's multiple dockets per day in each court in each room.

00:23:56.880 And so the docket is essentially just a list of matters that are to be dealt with at a specific

00:24:00.880 time. And you just said something, and I don't mean to interrupt you, but you've just said so many

00:24:06.080 interesting things in like 60 seconds. So Pearson Airport, that's the name of Toronto's international

00:24:12.080 airport. It's the busiest airport in the country by far. And it would be where thousands of these 0.99

00:24:17.600 Quarantine Act tickets were issued. And I never thought about it. They would all go to the nearest

00:24:21.600 court. Like they wouldn't be heard around the country because the alleged offense would have

00:24:25.820 occurred there in Toronto, I presume. So this poor court and judges and prosecutors, they were handed

00:24:33.480 thousands and thousands of Quarantine Act tickets because those busybody health police at Pearson

00:24:39.600 said so. And they may not have wanted this to be their life's work, I guess, right?

00:24:46.400 Well, I can imagine not. I mean, I can imagine getting into a career to deal with quasi-criminal

00:24:52.460 offenses or even going to law school to work for the Ministry of Attorney General and not wanting to

00:24:57.960 have to do thousands of these trials. I can imagine that that's nobody's career aspiration except for

00:25:03.960 my team and mine.

00:25:05.960 Well, listen, you're fighting for the little guy. I mean, you fight the fines literally anyone,

00:25:12.320 any religion, any background. We didn't discriminate. Anyone was welcome. And a lot of these people were

00:25:18.720 low-income people. Many of them were new Canadians who didn't have a familiarity with our legal system,

00:25:24.000 didn't know what their rights were. And by the way, the fines were atrociously large, like $5,000

00:25:30.180 plus per person. So you have a family of, let's say, four coming into the country. That's $20,000 worth of

00:25:36.460 fines. That's going to destroy a normal family. Absolutely. I mean, even with the surcharge,

00:25:42.920 which is 25%, one of those tickets comes to $6,250 each. And we've had people who have had

00:25:50.300 six kids, eight members of the family total, and each person gets a ticket.

00:25:55.060 That's a life savings wiped out. That's their entire home equity wiped out.

00:25:58.580 Yeah, absolutely. Even one person can't afford a $6,000 fine.

00:26:03.980 Now, I interrupted, Jenna, you were on a chair there, and I apologize for interrupting, but I

00:26:07.520 just wanted to unpack those two little things to clarify what a docket was. And just to think about

00:26:12.500 all these, every single one of these tickets being heard in the same court. Okay, so you discovered

00:26:17.500 that there was a secret list, as in they didn't publicize it. It was a withdrawal docket, a withdrawal

00:26:22.740 list. And what did that mean? And what did you discover?

00:26:25.140 Well, when it first started happening, we would get in touch with the court directly to make sure

00:26:30.260 that this wasn't some sort of error, or maybe it just was input incorrectly into the system. But we

00:26:35.240 started noticing the trend where it would be 10 scores of clients on each docket. And up until

00:26:41.820 yesterday, these dockets were happening probably monthly, I would say. And yesterday, we had a docket

00:26:47.680 with about 60 clients on it, all of them were withdrawn. We've got another docket coming. Yep,

00:26:52.660 another docket coming up on Monday with about 50 or 60 more people.

00:26:56.420 So these are Fight the Fines cases. These are people who came through our videos or our emails,

00:27:01.840 went to fightthefines.com, filled out the form, you and your team got on them. So when you're saying

00:27:06.280 50 or 60 a day are being withdrawn, those are 50 or 60 people that you've been helping,

00:27:12.400 that Democracy Fund's been helping.

00:27:13.660 Yes, those are 50 or 60 of our clients. That's not including members of the public who are

00:27:20.260 representing themselves, and they just don't know this is happening.

00:27:23.520 Can I ask you, is there any reason given? I mean, I can guess a reason. The court is full,

00:27:29.940 they have more important things to do, like go after real bad guys. Maybe they don't think they're

00:27:34.980 going to win them all. Maybe they just can't. I mean, some of these trials might be half a day or

00:27:39.780 a full day. Imagine taking up months of court time for this. That's my theory. Has anyone from

00:27:46.720 the government, from the prosecutors or from the courts given you their explanation for these?

00:27:51.940 And you mentioned they're not publicized, these lists, these withdrawal dockets. What do they

00:27:56.540 say is going on? Do they have an explanation?

00:27:59.920 They don't really, but I think we can infer that it comes down to a couple of variables. One being

00:28:05.220 court resources and the cost that it takes to prosecute and have trials for things like this.

00:28:11.840 And two being the fact that only a small percentage of these public health officers are actually showing

00:28:17.620 up to trial. So if they were to have a trial and these people don't show up, it has to be withdrawn.

00:28:22.760 And then that's a huge waste of resources.

00:28:24.420 Now let me stop you there again. I'm learning so many things from you, Jenna. That's incredible. I just

00:28:28.620 want to go there again. So these public health officers, so those would have been the people

00:28:32.480 at the airport issuing the tickets, I take it. And I'm guessing a lot of them are not still

00:28:38.960 employed doing that, I think. Or maybe they are. So when you're saying they're not bothering to show

00:28:44.160 up, is that because they were like a temporary health cop and now they've moved on to something

00:28:49.500 else? And so when it's trial time, two years later, three years later, whatever, they've moved on and

00:28:54.720 they couldn't care less. Help me understand why a public health officer would not show up at court.

00:28:59.940 I think that you've hit the nail on the head that the majority of these people, if not all,

00:29:05.460 were just temporary public health officers to help deal with this project, you could call it,

00:29:11.280 and to issue these tickets as some sort of a deterrence. And now fast forward to three years

00:29:16.400 later, some of these people are nurses. Some of them are former police officers. Some of them are

00:29:22.120 security guards. They're just random people who just happen to qualify to be an officer.

00:29:26.180 And especially the people who are nurses, you know, they've all moved on with their lives and

00:29:30.140 they've got jobs and they're not going to take hours out of every week to attend court for something

00:29:35.220 that maybe they don't even believe in anymore. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? And, you know, again,

00:29:42.000 that's using the sluggish system against itself. I think back to that moment, Jenna, I, that moment,

00:29:48.140 I, I blurt, have you ever done that? Have you ever blurted something out and then immediately thought,

00:29:53.660 why did I say that out loud? That's how I felt in our staff meeting when I said, we're going to take

00:29:59.400 a thousand cases. And everyone said, how, what? And, and I was, I was worried, but I think that the

00:30:10.200 strategy of go big is actually, I mean, if, if instead of having 1300 cases or 1500, as you and your

00:30:17.980 colleagues have had, if you had 15, then the system probably would have gone after all of them

00:30:24.240 because it could have handled that. But the sheer fact, you know, that old movie Spartacus,

00:30:28.860 where they say, who's Spartacus? I'm Spartacus. I'm Spartacus. And like everyone stood up and said,

00:30:33.000 no, I'm Spartacus. And so the Romans didn't know who to go after. I think that's what happened here.

00:30:38.780 It didn't happen on other lockdown cases. So the odd restaurant that would defy the law,

00:30:45.380 for example, Adam Skelly's, uh, Adamson barbecue in Toronto, they were almost alone. So you had

00:30:51.680 a hundred police swarm the place in red deer. You are outside red deer in mirror, Alberta. You had

00:30:57.560 the whistle stop diner in Calgary. You had without papers pizza. So you had like one brave person in

00:31:03.960 each of those cities. Trouble is in the entire police prosecutor court system can come down on them

00:31:09.880 like a ton of bricks. But if, if you would have had a hundred restaurateurs in Toronto, Calgary,

00:31:16.220 Edmonton, Vancouver, Montreal, a hundred saying, no, we're not part of this. It would have broken

00:31:20.640 the system the same way. I think we broke the system. I think our strategy of take every single

00:31:26.320 person and worry about how to pay for it later. I think that's what broke the system here, Jenna.

00:31:30.820 And I just think it's a miracle. And it shows what a tiny bit of courage and a tiny bit of

00:31:35.240 nonconformity and a tiny bit of defiance can do. I mean, that's my theory. You're, you're dealing

00:31:40.580 with this every day. You're in the belly of the beast, but I think that it was the sheer mass of

00:31:45.060 it that broke the system. What do you think? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I completely agree with you. I

00:31:51.080 mean, they've, they've done this to themselves by creating a project of giving out these huge tickets

00:31:56.700 to so many people, tens of thousands of people in the province and elsewhere. Um, but they didn't really

00:32:02.960 think about it. And we essentially just took that rope that they made and, and used it.

00:32:07.400 You know, I remember talking to a senior lawyer about how abusive these public health officers

00:32:12.840 often were at the airports. And I couldn't understand it, but the senior lawyer who's

00:32:16.840 older and wiser than me, he said, that's the point of it, Ezra. That's not a bug. That's a feature.

00:32:23.220 These public health officers want people to go home. So appalled that they tell 10 of their

00:32:29.600 friends how awful it was to get people not to travel. Like these hotel quarantines was another

00:32:35.320 thing. I don't know if you remember, they forced you to stay in a quarantine hotel at your own

00:32:38.740 expense. And I thought, how can, it's so abusive, so stupid. And this senior lawyer said, no, Ezra, 1.00

00:32:43.960 that's the point. They want to scare people into staying home, scare people into not, into not

00:32:50.280 going out, scare people into complying. And, and the sheer abusiveness was the point. They didn't

00:32:56.220 really think all the way down the line two years to when there'd be a prosecution because they almost

00:33:00.140 didn't care. They just wanted to terrify people, terrify and terrorize people. Jenna, you know who 1.00

00:33:06.940 I feel bad for are the thousands of people who probably sold their, you know, retirement funds,

00:33:16.460 mortgaged their house to comply and to pay. You're telling me a wonderful success story of the 1500

00:33:22.980 people, 1300 or 1500 people you represent and those who are self-represented. But there are probably

00:33:30.700 thousands of people who under terror and shame and stress ponied up the $6,000 for the fines.

00:33:41.280 There definitely are. And I do have to mention that not every ticket is getting withdrawn. They are

00:33:46.840 actually still prosecuting a lot of tickets. So we have several hundred people waiting for court dates.

00:33:52.540 So we're going to be going to court dates and having trials, et cetera, across the province.

00:33:56.640 And it is unfortunate because we've had a lot of people who have ended up having to pay fines

00:34:01.020 because we've had a trial with no defense and the prosecution wants to proceed. And that's just

00:34:07.940 where we're at right now is some people are getting off and some people aren't, but a lot are.

00:34:12.340 Yeah. Well, I like to say that even in the cases where we don't have the full success,

00:34:17.780 our clients are no further behind. If they would, I mean, first of all, if they have to pay the fine,

00:34:24.500 if they were going to pay the fine and if they were going to increase, like, I guess what I'm saying

00:34:28.280 is our best efforts, even if they don't succeed, are better for these folks. Because first of all,

00:34:33.720 at least they had a friend and an ally and someone helping them out, someone bearing some of the stress

00:34:38.140 out, someone showing them the ropes. Out of the 1300 or 1500, I don't know the exact number,

00:34:42.600 of cases that you and your team have taken. How many have come to a conclusion? Would you estimate?

00:34:51.740 Probably close to 800.

00:34:54.700 Wow. That's great. And again, just an estimate here. I know you haven't looked into the numbers

00:34:59.480 fresh. How many of those do you think have either been withdrawn, acquitted, or just have a token

00:35:05.760 payment of like a hundred bucks? I would say most of them, like maybe 90%. And that includes people

00:35:14.400 who might have a $500 fine or a $300 fine or no fine, just a suspended sentence. It's really only

00:35:21.280 a handful of people who have gotten these thousand dollar plus fines and they're not out of Pearson

00:35:27.260 generally. They're not out of the Mississauga court. It's a different thing where there's less

00:35:30.680 people being charged. So they have the resources. Right. So 90% success rate and the Mississauga

00:35:36.660 area, because they were supporting all the Pearson airport charges is the one that's overwhelmed.

00:35:41.800 You know, there are so many lessons to be learned in that. And I think one of them is strength in

00:35:46.720 numbers. And, uh, and to make the other guy go through the paces, don't make it easy on them.

00:35:55.440 Wow. This is, this is a great news story. This is how, this is the best case scenario. I remember

00:36:02.640 blurting it out like a thousand and, and the idea of jamming the system was the secret hope. And that

00:36:10.160 has come true. And I love the fact that the health officers who were going to provide the condemning

00:36:16.260 testimony that they couldn't even be bothered to show up two, three years later to me, that's the

00:36:21.240 icing on the cake. Well, Jenna, please take my thanks to yourself and to your teammates.

00:36:27.600 For those who still want to help, sounds like we have hundreds more cases still going in Ontario alone.

00:36:34.560 I know that we have cases in Windsor, in British Columbia. Uh, we have, I don't know all the cases

00:36:41.300 off the top of my head. When I say we, the Fight the Fines project then transformed into the Democracy Fund,

00:36:47.000 which is an independent, uh, CRA registered charity, by the way. So if you chip into it,

00:36:52.300 uh, you can get a charitable tax receipt, which I would encourage you to do. But it sounds like

00:36:56.380 you guys have learned the system, you're using the system, you've had a 90, 90% success rate,

00:37:02.620 and you've really put the government to the test. I, I'm thrilled. And I, I want as many of the donors

00:37:09.480 to the Fight the Fines project as possible to see this video, because I want them to know of the

00:37:13.940 success of you and your team. Last word to you, Jenna. Well, I have to say that even for people

00:37:20.020 who did end up having to pay some sort of a fine, I love to tell them that they've made their point

00:37:24.840 by simply fighting the ticket, having us on and going through the system, they've made their point

00:37:30.440 and they've also contributed. So even if they didn't completely get off their ticket, they've

00:37:35.240 actually still helped everybody else en masse get rid of theirs. Yeah. I think that's wise. And I can 0.97

00:37:41.220 just imagine how lonely it would have felt. I mean, I'm a former lawyer myself and I, you know,

00:37:46.820 I think about these things and I'm not a stranger to court for, I bet you for a lot of people, this

00:37:51.420 was the first time in their lives they've received a ticket for anything other than like a parking

00:37:56.100 offense. I bet you this is the first time in their lives that they were threatened with thousands

00:38:00.980 of dollars. I bet they were scared. And just to have you and your team, just to say, it's okay.

00:38:07.760 It's going to be okay. We'll walk you through. We'll be there with you. I can imagine the

00:38:11.660 psychological value of that to reduce the stress on these people. That itself is incalculable. You

00:38:19.020 can calculate the fines that we have saved these people. You can, you can do the math, but I don't

00:38:25.180 know if we'll ever be able to calculate the moral, um, self, the, um, the moral help and encouragement

00:38:34.080 that you gave them. So I thank you and your team, Jenna. Great to see you. Keep it up for

00:38:37.880 folks who are interested. They can go to the democracy fund.ca. By the way, we have other

00:38:43.680 famous clients like Tamara Leach, who's currently fighting in an Ottawa court. And we are still

00:38:48.480 doing an appeal for Arthur Pavlovsky in the Lethbridge court, but the bulk of the cases are

00:38:52.620 not famous. They're not famous cases. They're your friends and neighbors who had the $5,000 fines

00:38:58.460 that Jenna is fighting and winning. Jenna, thanks so much. And congratulations again.

00:39:02.080 You're welcome. Thank you so much for having me. And thank you for your kind words.

00:39:05.680 Right on. Well, it's, uh, it's true. I mean, you guys have done a miracle.

00:39:09.260 There you have it. Stay with us. More ahead.

00:39:22.820 Hey, welcome back. What do you think of, uh, there's so much going on, isn't there? First of all,

00:39:26.940 congrats to Jenna Little and her team for having such a high success rate. I'm thrilled about that.

00:39:31.600 And shame on Stephen Gilboa, who's sort of the opposite in character to Jenna Little. I mean,

00:39:36.780 Stephen Gilboa is such a mooch, such a shyster, such a socialist weasel. He's so embarrassing. 1.00

00:39:42.840 But did you see that clip I played of Omar Satchadina saying the Jews were warmongers

00:39:47.260 while it was Palestinians inside who called for peace? You just can't trust the media party anymore,

00:39:52.780 can you? That's why Twitter is so important. That's why we have to stop people from blocking us

00:39:57.240 or banning us on Twitter because that is where, under Elon Musk at least, free speech has a chance.

00:40:03.680 Under the old regime, it was like Google, YouTube, Instagram, all the others. They were censors.

00:40:08.200 I think there's a twinkle of hope in Twitter that can be a free speech place. I don't want to get my

00:40:12.340 hopes too high because they'll be dashed. But for now, Elon Musk is championing freedom in a way that no

00:40:17.660 national leader I know of is. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow,

00:40:23.580 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night,

00:40:28.000 and keep fighting for freedom.

00:40:35.580 you

Rebel News Podcast - December 06, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Steven Guilbeault pays his debts with just days to spare — using other people’s money!

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