Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ The state of civil liberties in Canada： in-depth with JCCF's John Carpay

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Civil Liberties is always on our minds, not just because we use our freedoms,

00:00:04.880 but because we fight for freedoms. Well, today we talked to one of Canada's leading freedom

00:00:09.620 fighters, my friend John Carpe from the Justice Center. But first, let me invite you to get the

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00:01:31.920 here's today's podcast. Tonight on Christmas Eve, the state of civil liberties in Canada,

00:01:53.660 a feature interview with our friend John Carpe of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom.

00:01:58.500 We're ready for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug! 0.81

00:02:13.540 Well, you hear me complain from time to time that there are not enough civil liberties organizations

00:02:18.680 in Canada that live up to their name. I mean, literally their name. Where's the Canadian Association

00:02:24.520 of journalists when David Menzies gets arrested five times for doing journalism? I suppose I put

00:02:30.660 myself in that too, having been a jailbird now myself. Where's Canadian journalists for free expression

00:02:37.380 fighting against Bill C-63, Trudeau's monstrous censorship bill that even pre-Elon Musk Twitter

00:02:44.660 compared to North Korea? Where's Penn Canada? Where's Amnesty International? Where is the Canadian

00:02:50.980 Civil Liberties Association? Alas, every one of them is like salt that has lost its saltiness.

00:02:58.400 What even is the point of those organizations? Of course, you know me, I love the Democracy Fund,

00:03:05.000 which is a registered charity that works with different cases, Rebel News highlights.

00:03:10.120 But the granddaddy of all freedom-oriented civil liberties law firms, they've been doing it for more

00:03:16.380 than 10 years. And you've heard us interview their staff lawyers and talk about their cases

00:03:21.480 a hundred times. Well, those are the guys and gals at the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedom,

00:03:27.360 otherwise known as the JCCF. And I'm delighted to say this year I was honored to receive their

00:03:33.800 Freedom Fighter Award named after George Jonas, the great Hungarian journalist and freedom fighter.

00:03:39.920 So as we are drawing to the end of 2024, I thought, who better to have a sit-down with and do a state

00:03:48.080 of the union in terms of civil liberties? How is Canada faring on these questions? From my point of

00:03:55.660 view, there's lots of reasons for pessimism, but we'll talk about that and see if there are any little

00:04:01.660 green shoots of hope. And maybe even if the election down south of us and the freedom orientation of some of

00:04:09.440 Donald Trump's cabinet, I mentioned Twitter, Elon Musk is sort of going to be like a kitchen cabinet

00:04:16.440 member in his belief in freedom of speech. Will some of the freedoms in America slosh over the border

00:04:23.740 onto us? Joining us now via Zoom is the boss of the Justice Center, our friend John Carpe. John,

00:04:31.600 great to see you again. Good to be with you. Well, the JCCF is so important and it's been around for so

00:04:38.180 long. You really are the granddaddy of civil liberties groups. But by another token, you're

00:04:43.780 the baby because you started long after the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and some of

00:04:48.900 those other groups were around. They just stopped working. Like I literally cannot tell you the last

00:04:54.540 time Canadian journalists for free expression did anything fighting for freedom. They don't even

00:05:00.600 put out a tweet or a statement about censorship like C63. You know, I used to be a member of Penn

00:05:07.960 Canada. What's the point? They never talk about censorship in Canada. What do you think about

00:05:13.240 the state of civil liberties? Well, in a similar vein, when the government's grossly violated our

00:05:20.960 freedoms of association, conscience, religion, peaceful assembly, and so on with the lockdowns and the

00:05:27.700 vaccine mandates or vaccine passports, basically mandatory vaccination policies, we saw the Canadian

00:05:35.660 Civil Liberties Association and other civil liberties groups basically embraced the government's

00:05:41.800 narrative on lockdowns and vaccine passports, basically supported those things. They took issue

00:05:49.040 with that some people were suffering worse harms than others. So if you were dark-skinned, female,

00:05:59.000 LGBTQ, handicapped, you're going to suffer worse from lockdowns than if you are male, light-skinned,

00:06:06.300 etc. That's the only thing really that they went on, but they fundamentally supported or at least did not

00:06:13.900 oppose these horrific violations of our fundamental charter freedoms that dragged on for literally

00:06:22.180 years. But you know what? It doesn't matter. You've got lots of people watching The Rebel and I think

00:06:32.280 other independent media are growing, and that's very positive that all of these independent media outlets

00:06:37.920 are growing. And the Justice Center has received tremendous support, and we're ready to enter into

00:06:43.080 2025 fighting very hard. Well, I mean, I take your point about it doesn't matter, but I think what you

00:06:50.260 mean is despite that. I mean, because all those things matter deeply. And I was going to talk about the

00:06:55.360 civil liberties bonfire of the pandemic because, of course, that's what spurred the birth of the

00:07:00.120 Democracy Fund. And that was really the JCCF, the Justice Center's time to shine. Unfortunately, some of the cases

00:07:07.520 that you took have been ignored and downplayed. Like, I can't believe, for example, one of the most

00:07:17.060 shocking violations of civil liberties in recent memory in Canada, when if you were not jabbed,

00:07:23.320 you could not get on a plane or a train or a ferry in this country, second largest country in the world,

00:07:29.480 cold country. You can't just drive across Canada in the winter. I mean, from coast to coast, it's...

00:07:35.960 The airlines didn't want that policy. There was no medical basis for that policy. They didn't respect

00:07:42.780 exemptions for religious or health reasons. They didn't give you credit if you had got the virus

00:07:49.380 and recovered naturally and thus had strong natural immunity. You and a number of very interesting

00:07:55.760 plaintiffs put together a very meticulous lawsuit. You deposed government bureaucrats and got astonishing

00:08:03.340 admissions. And yet, the courts in this country said, oh, it's over. So it's moot. So we're not

00:08:10.820 going to trouble your little, your pretty little minds with this. It's not of interest to the public.

00:08:17.620 We're not going to hear the case because it's all over. That's basically what they said, didn't they?

00:08:21.500 Yes. It's the silver lining on the cloud is that because of the court actions, we got admissions

00:08:29.280 from government officials saying under oath that there was no medical or scientific basis to support

00:08:37.540 these travel mandates. That's an admission we would have never received from the prime minister

00:08:42.580 or any cabinet minister or any provincial premier at a news conference. But it was through the court

00:08:47.960 action through one of our court actions in Saskatchewan. We had an admission from a government

00:08:54.100 official under oath that if somebody died in a car crash, when he's brought to the hospital,

00:09:00.440 they run a COVID test on the corpse. And if they, through PCR testing, if it's a positive test,

00:09:08.740 they list that as a COVID death. We got that through litigation. So it's been, on the one level,

00:09:14.980 it's been very discouraging. On another level, it's been a good tool for getting out the truth

00:09:19.940 and showing just how, how pathetic and miserable and weak the government's evidence is in these 0.83

00:09:27.860 court challenges to lockdowns. I take your point. So on one hand, we learned the awful truth about our 0.95

00:09:35.300 government, but on the other hand, they learned they can get away with it. So many of the precedent

00:09:42.660 setting cases that I would have thought would have been slam dunks for freedom,

00:09:47.620 the courts found some excuse to let it slouch by. It was almost like they found a pandemic exemption

00:09:54.500 in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and, and that the judges went out of their way to find some

00:09:59.780 angle to permit the greatest infringement of civil liberties in a generation. I think,

00:10:06.100 while you and I may have learned something about the nature of government,

00:10:08.540 government learned something about the nature of checks and balances on them, which is,

00:10:13.500 they really, I mean, the Emergencies Act, finally, it was found to be unconstitutional

00:10:21.660 legal by the federal court, more than a year later, by the way. But, or a year later, that is. But

00:10:28.780 other than that, I can't think of a single important case that the civil liberties side won. Can you,

00:10:35.580 like a single substantive case about, you know, a labor union agreement or a mask bylaw or these insane

00:10:44.540 arrive can lawsuits? I cannot think of an important blow for liberty. All the bad stuff was rubber

00:10:51.660 stamped. Am I missing? Was there some case other than the Emergencies Act? Did I miss something where,

00:10:56.460 where the bad guys might have lost for once? We've had minor and partial victories here and

00:11:02.540 there. But unfortunately, I have to agree with you substantively. The court rulings the last two or

00:11:07.580 three years in regards to the lockdowns of vaccine passports have been atrocious. I'm addressing this

00:11:13.340 by way of a book, which you and I have had a few discussions about. It's called Corrupted by Fear,

00:11:20.220 How the Charter Was Betrayed and What Canadians Can Do About It. It's going to be available January 15th.

00:11:26.380 And I am criticizing, going through what was the evidence that was put before the courts and how

00:11:33.820 the courts have, in many cases, they've ignored the evidence that was placed before them. Judges have

00:11:41.100 have made assertions in their ruling that are just repeating what they heard on the six o'clock news.

00:11:47.900 And we've had court rulings where the judge says, well, the government's evidence is more persuasive,

00:11:52.860 but they don't say how or why they believe the government's evidence to be more persuasive,

00:11:58.220 which makes for a very poor judgment. Because if you're going to accept one side's evidence as

00:12:03.900 stronger, better, more persuasive than the other, regardless of which side, but you owe it to

00:12:09.580 justice and you owe it to the people, to citizens, to explain how you arrived at that conclusion.

00:12:18.140 And it's rather ominous and dangerous when you've got court rulings that say, well, you know,

00:12:26.700 we think the government's evidence is more persuasive. And there's not a sentence in the court judgment

00:12:32.060 explaining why or how the government's evidence is more persuasive. So this book is part of an

00:12:38.220 effort. It's part of an already in existence, widespread effort to hold the judiciary to account

00:12:45.340 over betraying the charter. And with that public awareness that is, over the long run,

00:12:52.060 it's going to trickle up towards the appointment of better judges, as we've seen south of the border

00:12:58.220 in recent decades. Very slow, very gradual trend towards appointing judges that have a greater

00:13:05.660 appreciation for freedom.

00:13:06.860 Well, I hope that happens in Canada too. In Donald Trump's first term, there were some mistakes and

00:13:13.660 some missed opportunities. But I think a lot of people would agree, by working with the Federalist

00:13:18.940 Society, which is a freedom-oriented fraternity of lawyers, they managed to make such outstanding

00:13:24.380 appointments. Obviously, the Supreme Court appointments are the most important. But I think

00:13:29.260 that's a terrible contrast to Canada, where Stephen Harper, when he was PM, he really had the chance to

00:13:34.300 remake the Supreme Court forever. And he never thought about it. I think that was probably the

00:13:39.100 greatest missed opportunity of his prime ministership. Hopefully, if Pierre Paldé becomes PM next year,

00:13:45.580 he'll take a different approach. He'll realize that that is the greatest opposition to any freedom-oriented

00:13:51.820 government. Not the opposition, not the media, but the courts. Anyways, I don't want to spend too much

00:13:58.460 time talking about the COVID pandemic, because you and I have talked about that many times before.

00:14:03.260 And I know we've chewed these things over with our viewers. The JCCF has a lot of work to do

00:14:08.780 post-pandemic too, just like the Democracy Fund does. And I want to talk about some of those cases.

00:14:13.740 I printed off a few different stories from your website before I sat down here. Here's one.

00:14:19.500 And I'd like your help on this, because I haven't spent a lot of time on the subject.

00:14:24.220 Danielle Smith, who I know has come to a lot of Justice Center events,

00:14:28.700 so she's certainly sympathetic. She has introduced something she calls the Alberta Bill of Rights,

00:14:33.660 or maybe she's reintroduced it. And your headline is, Steps Forward, Steps Backward

00:14:41.660 in Bill 24 Changes to the Alberta Bill of Rights. Let me ask you, what does the Bill of Rights,

00:14:47.260 proposed Alberta Bill of Rights say? Why did the premier bring it in? And how can it be improved if

00:14:55.820 there are flaws to it? Okay. So the Alberta Bill of Rights has been

00:15:01.740 the law in the province of Alberta for several decades. In recent times, it's clearly being

00:15:09.740 ignored by the courts. So it's similar to the charter. It says every Albertan has the fundamental

00:15:16.060 right of free speech, freedom of conscience, religion, association, assembly, so on and so forth.

00:15:23.260 And it says that every law in Alberta must be interpreted and applied in a way that respects

00:15:31.660 these fundamental freedoms. So it's good to have in place, but the courts ignored it. In the case of

00:15:38.060 Sheely and Annette Lewis, they said, well, we're just going to do a charter analysis. We're not going

00:15:42.380 to pay attention to the Alberta Bill of Rights. A very similar outcome in the Ingram decision,

00:15:48.140 which was one of the Justice Centre's cases where the court ended up invalidating Alberta's lockdown

00:15:55.420 measures. So the background is the courts were ignoring the Alberta Bill of Rights. Daniel Smith's

00:16:02.940 UCP government brought in Bill 24 to improve it. The first draft of Bill 24, we said, it's not great

00:16:11.420 because you've got this language in there that's just like the charter that says that these rights

00:16:17.660 can be limited, subject to reasonable limits, as can be demonstrably justified in a free society.

00:16:27.660 So we've pushed back on that and said, well, at least change that language to get requirement for

00:16:36.460 evidence, which we didn't see much with all the charter rulings regarding lockdowns. So

00:16:43.500 Bill 24 was amended to get some better language in there. At the end of the day, I always go back to

00:16:50.460 what really matters more than the wording of the charter or the wording of the Bill of Rights is our

00:16:55.980 culture. Do we have a freedom-loving culture? If yes, that's going to trickle up to the politicians,

00:17:01.420 the lawyers, the judges. And so we think the Bill 24 was a small step forward. However,

00:17:09.660 in the bigger context, what really matters is that we educate Canadians of all ages, especially the

00:17:16.860 younger ones, but Canadians of all ages, we need to really appreciate our charter rights and freedoms

00:17:24.220 and the free society. If we don't, then it doesn't matter what the wording is of the Alberta Bill of

00:17:30.620 Rights or the Canadian Bill of Rights or the charter.

00:17:34.300 You know, I'm just thinking to myself, I actually did go to law school in Alberta 20 plus years ago,

00:17:40.220 and I forgot that there's an Alberta Bill of Rights. And I think the reason is because it's

00:17:44.700 like an appendix in the body. It really is not used. No one talks about it. I guess an appendix,

00:17:51.980 if you have appendicitis, you talk about it. But the fact that this law has been there dormant,

00:17:56.620 not really used, tells us a lot. How do you move a law from a regular statute, one of hundreds on the

00:18:03.420 books, to give it the power that it is any other laws, if they contradict the Alberta Bill of Rights,

00:18:13.980 are to that degree of no use or effect? Like how is it that the charter of rights is the supreme law for

00:18:21.900 Canada? But the Alberta Bill of Rights is not the supreme law for Alberta. And how could that be

00:18:28.140 changed? Because if you had a freer constitution of Alberta, then you have the constitution of Canada.

00:18:34.940 If you have Alberta, the freest place, and if you have that enshrined in a law, how do you make sure

00:18:41.100 that that law really is, you know, the determining factor as opposed to just something that judges say,

00:18:47.980 yeah, yeah, that doesn't really mean anything. That's just for show.

00:18:52.460 Well, and I think that's probably, you know, and I've not spoken to Danielle Smith about this,

00:18:57.580 and I can only speculate as to what her reasons are. But we had a situation in Alberta where courts 0.99

00:19:04.300 were blatantly, very blatantly, with the Sheila Annette Lewis case, which for the benefit of those

00:19:10.220 who hadn't heard, a lady, courageous lady, who had had COVID and had recovered from COVID,

00:19:16.940 she was pressured to get injected with COVID vaccine. She said she didn't want to get injected.

00:19:22.300 She was kicked off of a waiting list for life-saving organ transplant. Just a disgrace,

00:19:30.380 and shame on the Alberta doctors who did that. We provided lawyers for Sheila Annette Lewis, 0.98

00:19:37.100 went to court, lost, lost in the first level court of appeals. Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear it.

00:19:43.740 But this is an example where the judges completely ignored the Bill of Rights.

00:19:47.260 So I think the reason why it was, I think the reason why Premier Smith brought in Bill 24

00:19:53.340 is to put in some different language to force the judges to really take a look at it and change the

00:20:00.780 status quo of judges simply ignoring it. So I think that's one of the positives. Potentially,

00:20:07.820 we'll have to wait and see what the courts do with it. But the amendments to the Bill of Rights

00:20:13.500 were there so that the courts are no longer going to feel quite as comfortable in just ignoring it as

00:20:21.500 they have been.

00:20:23.500 You know, a few months ago, I went down to Sao Paulo, Brazil, first time I've ever been in South

00:20:29.260 America, because I heard there was a huge rally for freedom of the press and freedom of speech,

00:20:35.180 because a judge there, Alexandre de Maures, had banned the entire Twitter app.

00:20:41.980 And Elon Musk was in a very public dispute with this judge, who, by the way,

00:20:48.540 one of the things he would do is he would ban critics of the government on Twitter

00:20:53.260 and then tell Twitter to delete their account, but tell Twitter not to say who did it.

00:21:01.340 Like, this judge was saying to Twitter, suspend that account, I ordered you to, but you can't

00:21:08.140 tell anyone I ordered you to, and they can't, you know, you have to keep this whole thing secret.

00:21:12.060 And Elon Musk basically said, you're asking us to break the law, we're not going to do that.

00:21:18.540 They had this huge fight. Well, de Maures, since Musk wouldn't ban a handful of critics,

00:21:27.100 Maures banned the entire app from everyone in Brazil. You had to get a VPN to use them.

00:21:33.260 So I went down to Sao Paulo. I wanted to see how big a free speech rally is in,

00:21:39.420 I'm not going to call Brazil the third world, but it's a developing country.

00:21:43.020 Do they care about freedom? And John, I don't know if you know, but there were 200,000 people there.

00:21:50.060 And obviously not all of them spoke English, but my question was, why are you here?

00:21:54.860 They all said freedom of speech. They all said Elon Musk on Twitter. Like, it wasn't just

00:21:59.020 a partisan rally. They really knew why they were there. Here's a quick clip

00:22:02.860 of my trip to Sao Paulo. It's just, it was incredible to see the different races and the

00:22:07.340 different ages. It felt, it felt sort of wonderful to see this. It was like one of those old Benetton

00:22:14.540 ads, people of every background, but unified for the belief in freedom. Here, take a look.

00:22:19.500 Why did you come to the Bolsonaro rally today?

00:22:21.740 I, I come here because I'm here to, to defend the free of Brazil because Chandon is, uh, he's

00:22:35.660 Freedom of speech? Yes, yes. He's closing our, our mouth. Oh, really? Because we...

00:22:40.940 Lula is doing that? Or Moray? Moray. Moray is, um... That's the judge. He's the judge. He's,

00:22:47.340 uh, literally is just a toy for him. It's just a toy.

00:22:51.500 This Alexandre de Moray, he actually, he shut up 22 million people that use X or the X Twitter

00:22:59.820 here in Brazil. So 22 million. It's a lot. It's a lot. 22 million.

00:23:06.620 I think in the United States, what they're doing to Donald Trump, trying to censor him, trying to

00:23:11.420 take legal action against him. I feel like they're doing the same thing here as well.

00:23:17.420 Uh, and this Alexandre de Moray, I think he's a radical judge. Does it look likely that he'll

00:23:23.260 be impeached or do you think he's going to continue doing what he's doing?

00:23:27.260 I think he is unfortunately going to keep doing what he's doing, which is a shame for us,

00:23:33.100 Brazilian, because this, he doesn't represent us, but I hope one day it will stop. 1.00

00:23:38.060 They're going to be one impeachment. They're going to ask for impeachment. This time,

00:23:42.620 we have a lot of power. The judge Alexandre de Moray?

00:23:46.060 Yeah. Yeah. Then it got to be a lot of power, this impeachment for 90s. I hope so you win.

00:23:53.020 John, it was an amazing rally. And I sometimes wonder if we could muster even 2,000

00:23:59.580 people or even 20,000 people for free speech in Canada. And I worry that we can't. Once there was a

00:24:05.980 50,000-person rally for free speech in Ottawa, by the way, when they tried to shut down the radio

00:24:11.740 station in Quebec called Chois FM. So there was a moment in Canada where we had a rally of that size.

00:24:18.300 But my point, and I'm sorry I'm taking so long to get to it, is Alexandre de Moray is a judge.

00:24:25.340 He was using the statutes of Brazil. He was just abusing them. And you know those old sayings,

00:24:31.820 show me the man, I'll find you the crime. That was Lavrenti Beria of the predecessor to the KGB.

00:24:37.740 Or you know the other saying, the more laws, the more corruption. Like you and I believe in the

00:24:43.980 law as a tool for freedom, but other people use the law to suppress, even to pervert the law.

00:24:50.140 How do you stop the Alexandre de Moray's from putting roots in Canada? How do you stop

00:24:56.380 left-wing activists from colonizing our laws?

00:25:02.220 Part of, that's like a many part response, but I'll mention a few components because that could

00:25:10.460 be a very long answer. We've got to educate our children, our grandchildren. The Justice Center is

00:25:17.180 largely developed and will be completing in 2025 a charter curriculum for high school students.

00:25:22.620 That's available on our website. People of all ages can read that and use that. But if you have a

00:25:29.100 Canadian public where Canadians understand freedoms, we understand it in our minds,

00:25:35.820 we cherish it in our hearts. And if you have citizens who really demand the rule of law and that we are

00:25:46.860 governed by laws, not by the whim of the mob or the whim of the king or the prime minister,

00:25:53.420 if we have citizens who demand that our freedoms of expression, conscience, religion, peaceful

00:26:00.140 assembly, association, and so on, be supported, that's going to trickle up. You're going to have

00:26:05.740 politicians and eventually judges as well that are going to have that. So it starts and it ends with

00:26:14.860 the culture. If you have a culture of freedom-loving people, it's highly unlikely that you're going

00:26:21.740 to get some tyrannical judge that's just going to take away freedoms contrary to what everybody in 0.96

00:26:28.620 society knows and appreciates and understands to be true.

00:26:34.380 You know, it's not just the courts. I mean, as you may know, John, and I didn't call you from jail,

00:26:41.740 but I was arrested a few weeks ago in a kind of civil disobedience, but not even really. I wasn't

00:26:49.260 I wasn't actually trying to be disobedient. So I take that back. It wasn't civil disobedience.

00:26:55.100 There was a pro-Hamas demonstration near my house that I think probably violated some

00:27:00.940 hate crime law, although I'm not a big fan of hate crime laws. I think there are other laws that should

00:27:05.340 be prosecuted from trespass, nuisance, uttering threats, assault, supporting a banned terrorist

00:27:11.180 group. Those are all laws that I can get behind. But this astonishing hate crime, like reenactment

00:27:19.020 of a terrorist leader was nuts. And I went to photograph it and the police arrested me saying

00:27:23.820 my presence was inciting the pro-Hamas people to breach the peace. Now, I know that that was unlawful,

00:27:29.580 but I I felt like I had to stand my ground. I was arrested and jailed for a few hours.

00:27:36.300 I saw I saw the video clip. Yeah, I'm glad. I'm glad it was only a few hours because it's

00:27:42.860 sucks to be in jail. I spent 23 hours there myself and Tamera Leach 49 days, but I'm sorry you had to

00:27:48.220 spend even a few hours. It was disgraceful. Well, thank you for that. But even that no one I mean,

00:27:55.820 these cops were telling law abiding Canadians to back off. They were because that was a path of 0.96

00:28:02.220 least resistance. And I know that's not normal because, John, I was recently at the riots in

00:28:07.580 Amsterdam and I go to Davos every year in Switzerland where all these super important VVIPs are there.

00:28:13.740 And the Dutch police and the Swiss police would never think of stopping a journalist. In fact, I was shocked

00:28:20.380 by how helpful they were. Even in Amsterdam, there was an actual police action when I was there. And

00:28:28.620 they just said, who are you with? I said, we're with the media. They said, okay. And then they went

00:28:32.620 on to like in Canada, it's not just the judges. I think it's every element. You have partisan prosecutors.

00:28:40.780 Judges are being taught to use pronouns. And if you don't use, if you misgender someone,

00:28:46.140 you could throw a whole case. And police, I think, have downloaded that authoritarian nature.

00:28:52.140 I can't believe how light touch the cops in Davos are every year when we're standing next to super

00:28:58.460 important political leaders. In Canada, we get arrested routinely. It's not just the judges,

00:29:05.420 is what I'm saying. It's the entire culture. I feel like that's changed over the course of the last 10 years.

00:29:13.660 Well, sadly, I have to agree with you. This is why we've got our work cut out for us. And a big part

00:29:22.540 of it is with the school system. I tell parents, if you are able to, and I know some parents cannot

00:29:29.500 because of financial reasons or scheduling or whatever, but if you're able to take your kids

00:29:35.340 out of the public schools, put them in private school, homeschool them. If you're a grandparent,

00:29:40.860 tell your kids that you will help them and support them, whether financially or otherwise,

00:29:48.220 to get their kids out of these toxic places where they are obviously not learning. They're being taught

00:29:57.420 what to think. They're not being taught how to think. And we see this, I've been seeing this for decades,

00:30:02.460 on university campuses. The people graduate from grade 12, they go to university, they can't think,

00:30:09.180 they can't reason, they can't debate, they can't argue. All they can do is just get very angry when

00:30:16.460 somebody says something that they disagree with, and they can't even articulate, they're not even

00:30:21.580 capable of debate. So we need that change in the education. That's a big part of it. It's going to take

00:30:28.220 time. We're not going to change that in weeks or months. It's going to take years and decades.

00:30:33.740 And we got to reclaim our freedoms because, as Jordan Peterson once said, one of his talks

00:30:41.180 a year and a half ago, I can't remember when it was, but he said, slaves look to tyrants to give them

00:30:49.500 meaning and purpose in life and direction and how to live and what to think. And tyrants look to slaves

00:30:55.900 to be empowered. But if you have educated, awake, responsible adults as citizens,

00:31:03.180 it's very hard for tyranny to take root.

00:31:04.940 You know, I saw Francois Legault, the premier of Quebec, a few weeks ago, react to a scene where a

00:31:14.700 lot of pro-Hamas protesters were taking over a public street. And there were also other scenes of taking

00:31:22.860 over other public places, including actually outside the Notre Dame Basilica, which is the

00:31:27.980 major cathedral in that city. And I've seen similar things in my city of Toronto. I see the pro-Hamas 1.00

00:31:34.940 people block very important roads. One's called the Gardner Expressway. They often block downtown

00:31:42.700 intersections. And one of the things they do is they then have a little prayer. They have the Islamic

00:31:49.020 style prayer right on the street. They just sort of bend down and kneel and bow down and say,

00:31:54.220 we're praying now. Don't you dare move us. And to me, that's an act of domination. There's a hundred

00:32:00.620 mosques in the Toronto area. Feel free to pray all you want on the mosque. Pray even in the park,

00:32:05.500 I suppose. I mean, if you're not bugging anyone, but to block a street. And I can imagine how frustrating

00:32:11.100 that was. And Legault had these comments to make when he saw some of this. Here, take a look.

00:32:18.140 I think he was reacting to something that he didn't like, which I don't like either. I think

00:32:38.300 it's the domination of public space and the violation of various laws. But I think he reached

00:32:44.220 for the wrong tool there. I think what these pro-mask people are doing is weaponizing their religion,

00:32:51.260 daring you to move them for the offense. It might be a bylaw offense. You can't block a street.

00:32:58.460 You can't do something religious while you're blocking a street to make it lawful suddenly.

00:33:04.700 So I think Legault realized that they were being cheeky and taking advantage and sort of playing the

00:33:13.260 race car there. And he wanted to stop that. But instead of insisting that they just clear the

00:33:18.060 street, he was going after the religious aspect. And I agree that they're doing it for political

00:33:23.980 purposes. They're infusing their lawbreaking with religion to sort of dare you to arrest them for 0.56

00:33:30.620 it. And then they'll claim discrimination. So what they're doing is odious. But I think that Legault,

00:33:35.340 if he was serious about stopping that, he would have, over the last 14 months, gone after them for

00:33:41.260 trespass, nuisance, mischief, vandalism, uttering threats. There's some cases where you're wearing

00:33:48.140 a mask while committing a crime. That's an offense additionally. Tell me what your thoughts are,

00:33:53.340 because I know that the Justice Center recently sent a demand letter to Premier Legault. What's your

00:33:59.180 take on things regarding these mass protests in the streets?

00:34:05.020 So freedom of expression does not authorize you to block traffic, does not, in my view,

00:34:12.300 authorize you to close borders. When the Coutts protests in Alberta and the Windsor one,

00:34:19.100 the Justice Center didn't speak out and say, yeah, you can stop economic activity. You cannot prevent

00:34:25.020 people from going to work. You cannot prevent people from entering into and leaving their buildings

00:34:32.940 where they work. You cannot obstruct streets. And so as a passionate defender of campus-free speech,

00:34:40.380 you know, when the Justice Center first started in 2010, I'd say close to half of our cases were

00:34:46.620 campus-free speech cases. We still do a lot of this work, but now it's not half. Now it's, you know,

00:34:51.500 it's down to a tenth just because we've grown and taken on so much other stuff. So I'm a passionate

00:34:56.140 believer in campus-free speech. I also applauded the dismantling of these tent cities. Your freedom

00:35:03.580 of speech does not extend to, you know, putting up a permanent or quasi-permanent something that

00:35:10.620 goes on for days or weeks or months and you have your tent city. No, it's quite reasonable for the

00:35:15.340 university to say you can put up your display from, you know, 9am to 5pm or 8am to 8pm, whatever,

00:35:22.540 but you got to take it down. And that space is a public space that other people can use.

00:35:27.820 So what you need to do is crack down hard on, enforce the existing laws. So if you are shutting

00:35:35.660 down traffic, that even, there's criminal code provision as well that can be applicable. It's

00:35:41.580 certainly against Ontario's provincial legislation to block traffic. Guaranteed.

00:35:48.140 You know, enforce the law and arrest these people. If it's a provincial offense, give them a ticket.

00:35:53.500 If it's criminal, handcuff them, take them off to chill and so on. Enforce the existing laws.

00:36:01.260 And then also, you know, leave the space for law-abiding, peaceful expression, like on a public

00:36:08.700 sidewalk where you can stand there with your sign, no matter how hateful it is or is perceived to be.

00:36:13.260 Yeah, my one problem, I mean, I've always considered myself a very strong free speecher.

00:36:21.900 But what happens if you bring into Canada, not just thousands or hundreds of thousands,

00:36:26.860 but literally millions of people who do not value free speech, who do not value the peaceful exchange

00:36:33.980 of ideas, the meritocratic non-violent solution to problem solving.

00:36:41.420 You're describing Islamists as well as woke equity, diversity, inclusion. You got two groups here that

00:36:49.820 are a threat to our free and democratic society. Right.

00:36:53.420 And there's got to be this cultural response, sorry to interrupt you.

00:36:55.980 No, you're so right.

00:36:56.700 You know, there's threats from both of those groups and they're fundamentally similar in those 0.71

00:37:01.420 ways. They hate the fundamental freedoms. They hate democracy and Western civilization

00:37:07.660 and fundamental freedoms. Both the woke progressives and some Muslims, not all Muslims, 0.94

00:37:14.060 but some Muslims are just like the woke people. They want to shut you up and they want to control 1.00

00:37:19.740 your speech. And they think they're entitled to control somebody else's vocal cords.

00:37:23.100 Yeah. And what worries me is that if you bring in people in such number that they don't integrate 0.75

00:37:29.740 and assimilate those Canadian values, I think it's possible for anyone from any country in the world

00:37:35.660 to come to Canada and be properly absorbed and integrated and assimilated and turned into a Canadian.

00:37:42.780 But that only happens when the trickle is slow enough that we can Canadianize them,

00:37:49.340 rather than for them to turn us into a kind of Gaza-fication. What I see on the streets of Toronto

00:37:56.700 is much more culturally a fit for what they do in Gaza. There hasn't been a kind of

00:38:03.820 outright terrorist violence yet. There have been schools shot, Molotov cocktails thrown,

00:38:11.740 glass windows smashed some arsons. So it's one step beneath what they would actually do in Gaza,

00:38:18.700 but I feel like if you bring in a sufficient number of people who are fundamentally illiberal,

00:38:25.260 that's just going to be the cultural center of gravity. And I think our freedom mindset relies on

00:38:33.020 a certain shared view of the world and in a way, a high trust society. What I mean by that is if you lose the

00:38:41.180 game, but everyone played by the same rules, our system is built on the loser saying, okay,

00:38:47.740 I had my shot, I made my argument, I lost, I'll do better next time. But if you only use democracy for

00:38:55.900 the tools that you to win, and if you don't win, if you flip the game board up and say, I don't,

00:39:02.860 like, I'm just worried that at a certain point, if we bring in too many illiberal people,

00:39:08.140 that our freedom way of thinking will be fine amongst ourselves. But if we are dealing with a mass of

00:39:19.260 people who do not value freedom, and who would do violence if they could, I think there's a breaking

00:39:25.020 point there. I think that mass immigration undoes the necessary cultural foundation upon which 0.99

00:39:31.580 libertarianism relies. What do you think? I can't disagree with you. And I do not disagree with you

00:39:38.620 on this general idea that if we want to maintain a healthy democracy, where people respect the

00:39:47.100 fundamental freedoms of conscience, religion, expression, and so on, we do have to take a look at

00:39:53.900 the immigrants that are coming in. Bearing in mind at the same time, I'll never forget some

00:39:59.260 20-something years ago. I was running for the Reform Party. That's when you and I met in the early

00:40:07.820 1990s. And I was having lunch with a Reform Party supporter, Caucasian guy, married to a Chinese

00:40:16.380 Canadian. And he said that all of his Chinese in-laws were hardworking, taxpaying, pro-family,

00:40:28.060 pro-freedom, whatever. And they thought that the biggest problem in Canada was white people.

00:40:33.260 And so my point is that, yes, absolutely, we have to defend our freedoms. That includes

00:40:40.540 not allowing in people that are demonstrably hostile to our values, or allowing those people 1.00

00:40:48.380 in numbers where they can be properly assimilated. But we've got to clean up our own backyard

00:40:55.100 as well as cleaning up the immigration system.

00:40:58.300 Yeah. I mean, and I don't think I mentioned race at all today. I mean, one of the most poignant

00:41:02.700 moments in Rebel News was when we sent some of our reporters into Hong Kong during their final,

00:41:09.500 last desperate battle to keep the freedom alive in that city. And to hear these Hong Kong

00:41:15.580 residents, including the students, passionately defend freedom of speech and the right to dissent and

00:41:20.940 the right to challenge your government was heartwarming. But in the end, heartbreaking

00:41:25.500 as China crushed them, frankly, used the Wuhan virus as an occasion to distract the world and 0.86

00:41:32.860 to crush Hong Kong. But to see the beautiful way that they pined for the British system 0.92

00:41:38.380 of civil liberties and the rule of law was actually incredible. You're right. And I remember during the

00:41:43.260 COVID protests, you heard a disproportionate number of voices with the East European accent who perhaps

00:41:50.700 remembered what communism was like. And I love encountering people from around the world who

00:41:55.660 are angry that we would throw away our freedom so gently. But I'm afraid that we have. That'll be a

00:42:01.420 subject for another time and maybe for a different forum. But it is something that I worry about. John,

00:42:06.540 it's great to catch up with you. We love the Justice Center. We love to interview you and your

00:42:10.620 lawyers. We interviewed James Manson just the other day about that police officer who donated 50 bucks

00:42:15.820 to the truckers and had his life turned upside down. So we love to follow the JCCF. Thank you for

00:42:22.620 giving me your award this year. That was a real honor. Thank you. We'll continue to shine the light

00:42:29.500 on what you're doing to help get the word out. And I myself take some pride in the fact that from time

00:42:35.260 to time to time, I chip in a few bucks at jccf.ca. And I know a lot of our viewers do too. John,

00:42:42.380 good luck in the next year. In one sentence, give us a reason to be optimistic about 2025.

00:42:51.420 Here's my reason to be optimistic. Truth always vanquishes the lie. Freedom always ultimately prevails

00:42:59.420 over tyranny. Justice will triumph over injustice. And so we need to practice the virtues of courage

00:43:06.060 to speak truth to power, perseverance to keep up the fight, not give up and quit in a few weeks,

00:43:11.180 a few months, but be in this for the long haul. But we're going to win in the end and we're going to

00:43:16.220 win back all the rights and freedoms that have been lost. Well, from your mouth to God's ears,

00:43:20.460 I hope that all happens. It will be a big battle until that happens. John, great to see you. Keep

00:43:25.100 up the good work and we'll talk to you again soon. Take care. All right. There you have it. John Carpe,

00:43:30.860 the leader of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms and a good friend of the show. Until next

00:43:37.340 time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home, good night and keep fighting

00:43:43.100 fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - December 25, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ The state of civil liberties in Canada： in-depth with JCCF's John Carpay

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