Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau never forgets an enemy — that's why Ottawa took Freedom Convoyers to court

00:00:00.000 Tonight, a feature interview with Keith Wilson, the lawyer at the heart of the trucker convoy.

00:00:07.620 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:00:18.980 Well, it's almost 2024, but we are still living through one of the most interesting moments of

00:00:25.540 2022. I'm referring to the greatest populist democratic uprising in Canadian history since,

00:00:33.220 oh, what? I don't know, probably a rebellion in the 19th century. I'm talking about the peaceful

00:00:38.040 trucker convoy that after two years of lockdowns and vaccine mandates and authoritarianism,

00:00:47.160 the salt of the earth, working class people said, you know what? That's enough. And the most

00:00:52.680 independent-minded people around, namely truckers, often who own their own rig, own their own

00:00:58.380 business. Truckers who have a lot of time to think. They're on the road listening to talk radio,

00:01:03.800 listening to podcasts. Truckers who, in their own personal life, are amongst the most isolated

00:01:08.960 people around. They're certainly not going to be disease vectors. Imagine them being told that

00:01:14.940 they must get a jab to continue their work. The truckers who were praised during the early days

00:01:19.180 of the pandemic as the people who kept society going. And it was the truckers who inspired so

00:01:24.760 many thousands and indeed millions more who had a peaceful march on protest, perhaps the peaceful

00:01:30.180 mass movement, most peaceful mass movement in Canadian history. And simply by honking their horns

00:01:36.100 managed to make Justin Trudeau, first of all, I was going to say blink, but before he blinked,

00:01:40.980 he freaked out. He overreacted. He was ashamed internationally that his own people were rising up

00:01:45.720 against him. He overreacted. And he threw the entire country into martial law, invoking the

00:01:50.240 Emergencies Act, something not even done on 9-11. And when I say we're still living through the

00:01:55.720 reverberations of that, I mean, I think one of the reasons we're freer today and faster than we would

00:02:02.420 have been is because of the truckers. I think one of the reasons why Pierre Polyev is the leader of

00:02:07.120 the Conservative Party instead of that demi-liberal Aaron O'Toole is because of the truckers. O'Toole was

00:02:13.100 thrown out by his own caucus for his refusal to even meet with the truckers. But they're still

00:02:17.800 trying to destroy the people behind the trucker movement. I'll tell you one thing about Justin

00:02:21.620 Trudeau. He carries a grudge. He's very vengeful and into personal vendettas. He never forgets an

00:02:28.260 enemy. And the enemy he saw in the truckers, well, he saw many enemies, but the most presentable,

00:02:36.280 most winning, most easy-to-like and easy-to-follow trucker leader was none other than our friend

00:02:44.860 Tamara Leach. She herself brought no truck to Ottawa, but she became sort of the poet laureate

00:02:52.700 of the truckers. Not only did she handle logistics and make organizational decisions behind the scenes,

00:02:59.280 but she made very soft-focused Facebook videos that time and again encouraged people to be gentle,

00:03:06.460 encouraged people to be peaceful. And she became the lovable face of the trucker movement. There

00:03:11.940 were many angry people on the movement for sure. I can think of a few. But she was a Métis grandma 0.99

00:03:17.880 from Alberta who had just had enough. And it was a powerful force. And you know Justin Trudeau,

00:03:23.400 he doesn't do well with strong women, especially strong indigenous women. Ask Jody Wilson-Raybould 1.00

00:03:28.820 if you doubt me. So he invoked the Emergencies Act. He arrested Tamara Leach, jailed her for 49 days,

00:03:36.900 and has been prosecuting her ever since. We're coming up on the two-year anniversary of the convoy.

00:03:43.740 The trial of Tamara Leach for a trivial matter of incitement to mischief or some

00:03:48.180 related offense has gone on for weeks now, more than 30 days of hearings. And the Democracy Fund

00:03:56.380 lawyers working on the file confirmed for me my instincts that if there weren't all this political

00:04:01.840 baggage and this media interest in Trudeau's personal connection, this would have been dropped

00:04:06.620 by the crown more than a year ago, as so many other so-called pandemic offenses have been.

00:04:12.480 So for the course of the next half hour, I want to talk about the reverberations of the trucker

00:04:19.600 convoy, the Freedom Convoy. I want to talk a little bit about Tamara Leach's trial, which bizarrely and

00:04:25.000 incredibly and atrociously will continue on well into the spring. I want to talk about what's

00:04:31.500 happening with other elements of the trucker litigation and what the legacy of the truckers will

00:04:38.520 be. We have a hand in that legacy at Rebel News. We proudly published Tamara's autobiography called

00:04:44.720 Hold the Line, which was a massive bestseller and helped fix the story that was told with lies by the

00:04:50.920 regime media. And of course, our cousins at the Democracy Fund have crowdfunded Tamara's legal defense. 0.97

00:04:56.640 So we believe in Tamara Leach. And joining us now to talk about Tamara Leach, her trial, the truckers,

00:05:03.580 and the future is our friend Keith Wilson, King's counsel and a lawyer during the crisis for the

00:05:11.100 trucker convoy. Keith joins us now. Thanks for having me on, Ezra. Good to see you.

00:05:15.400 Well, it's a pleasure to have you here. Not only were you a lawyer for the Freedom Convoy, but you

00:05:19.580 were a lawyer on other projects too, including, for example, if memory serves, the lawsuit involving

00:05:26.060 Maxime Bernier and Brian Pettford about the ban, the no-fly list for unvaccinated people on airlines.

00:05:34.740 Am I remembering correctly? Yeah. I mean, I initially got involved. It was my wife who

00:05:40.400 was increasingly concerned with her background as a university-degree RN nurse of retired,

00:05:48.800 seeing what was happening with the COVID decision-making and the mandates and the apparent

00:05:53.300 rationales for them. And of course, me seeing the civil liberties aspects and the impacts it was

00:05:57.280 having on everyone that she asked me to get involved and take a case. And I agreed to be

00:06:01.720 a contract lawyer to the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms, representing former

00:06:06.820 Premier Brian Pettford and a representative charter challenge on behalf of 6 million unvaccinated

00:06:14.060 Canadians who had had their right to travel in the second largest country by landmass in the world,

00:06:20.340 their fundamental charter right of mobility violated by these arbitrary vaccine mandates that prohibited

00:06:28.760 them from flying, taking a ship, a boat or train. And so, yeah, I led one of the challenges there up into the federal court.

00:06:40.860 Just gracefully, that matter was not only thrown out, but the Court of Appeal said they wouldn't even hear it

00:06:46.160 because it was moot because it was over. It's funny how that was moot because it was over, but the prosecution

00:06:52.580 of truckers, whether they're in the Windsor area, the Ottawa area, Coutts, Alberta, or of course, Tamera Leach,

00:07:00.220 that's apparently not moot. The government will continue to prosecute the cases they want, but they

00:07:05.260 don't, apparently don't have to go and justify their constitutional infringements. I think that reduces

00:07:11.680 respect for the legal system. It's incredible to me, Keith, that the Supreme Court of Canada, as far as I

00:07:18.340 know, hasn't yet bothered itself with hearing any cases emanating from the lockdown. So, I mean,

00:07:24.140 correct me if I've missed one, but here we are, almost four years after the beginning of the pandemic.

00:07:30.020 We had lockdown laws, vaccine laws, quarantine laws, mandatory airport quarantines in hotels. We had

00:07:37.100 every infringement imaginable, and the Supreme Court, almost four years later, apparently has had more

00:07:43.260 important things to do. Am I right on that, that they haven't heard a pandemic case?

00:07:46.420 You are, and it's not just at that level. What we've seen is our courts, so far, have not been willing

00:07:56.720 to do a thorough examination, to allow evidence to come before them, to do a thorough examination

00:08:05.240 of the fundamental premises that led to this massive loss of rights, this massive overreach of

00:08:15.920 government, these incredible harms economically, socially, educationally, relationship-wise,

00:08:23.120 mental health-wise, for people that weren't able to be at the side of dying loved ones,

00:08:27.200 or special events, weddings, the educational harm to our children, and so on.

00:08:32.960 Our courts are a very important institution, and regrettably, I believe that the courts are

00:08:44.020 demeaning their own value and their own role in our society, in Canadian society, and democratic society,

00:08:50.320 when they decline to give an objective, thorough analysis of the evidence that is increasingly clear

00:08:59.200 that these decisions were horrifically wrong.

00:09:03.880 Yeah. You know, it's incredible to me that they won't even hear the case. I mean, it would be one

00:09:09.540 thing if they heard the case and ruled in favor of the authoritarian lockdowns, that would be very

00:09:13.500 disappointing. But for them to refuse to even hear the cases, including the flights of the no-fly list

00:09:19.100 case that you referred to, to me is atrocious. You know, I think one of the worst moments, and I've mentioned

00:09:22.820 this on the show before, is that early on, when vaccine mandates were still being, were still very

00:09:31.120 new and were subject to looming court challenges, where labor unions were forcing this on their

00:09:37.380 members, where, or refusing to grieve them, where, you know, the science was very iffy, but the government

00:09:44.920 was firing people from federal institutions, including the Canadian Armed Forces, when they were banning

00:09:49.820 people. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court himself announced publicly that he was bringing

00:09:58.640 in a vaccine mandate for the Supreme Court of Canada staff itself. So there were all these cases

00:10:05.580 across Canada in labor tribunals, in courts. It was a live issue. They had not been adjudicated yet.

00:10:15.000 Tested facts had not yet been brought to court. The law had not been examined. And the Chief Justice

00:10:21.660 short-circuited all of that. He headed it all off in the past by announcing,

00:10:27.080 hey, everybody, we're invoking a vaccine mandate at our office. And yeah, I just happen to be the

00:10:31.960 Chief Judge of the Supreme Court. So anyone who, across this country, who thinks they're going to

00:10:36.380 challenge this, just read between the lines on how I'm going to vote. Like, it wasn't just an

00:10:41.240 atrocious violation of civil liberties for the staff at the Supreme Court. It was a way of telling

00:10:46.020 every other judge, prosecutor, and lawyer in the country, don't even bother trying to challenge a

00:10:52.580 vaccine mandate. I've just shown you that not only am I going to do it, I'm going to boast about it in

00:10:57.280 public. And what are you going to do about it? I think that was perhaps the most disgraceful moment

00:11:01.500 for the Supreme Court during the entire pandemic. What do you think?

00:11:04.520 Well, yes. And not just that court, unfortunately. There was no obligation on part for the court to

00:11:15.340 release private medical information of its staff and its judges. There are privacy considerations

00:11:23.360 here, and they should have been respected, in my view. But there's another one. Let me give a little

00:11:28.360 vignette of what it felt like to be one of those lawyers in these courtrooms. Of course, not the Supreme

00:11:33.360 Court because we never got there, but the other ones. And it was the masking. So you're going into

00:11:41.260 court, and we all visualize. When you go into a courtroom, there's this huge distance between you

00:11:48.460 and the judge, and they're above you, right? That's how all courtrooms are set up. So first of all,

00:11:53.620 you've got distancing. So why am I even have to put a mask on? But you've got a box of masks in front of

00:12:00.080 you. And on the end of the box, in big, bold letters, it says, warning, this mask will not

00:12:08.040 protect against respiratory virus, the spread of respiratory viruses, including COVID-19.

00:12:14.460 Yeah.

00:12:15.300 And you're sitting there waiting to prepare, and this box is sitting at you, and you're going,

00:12:21.120 this is theater. This is theater. And oh my goodness, the court's playing along with the theater.

00:12:27.460 So it's been a deeply, another senior lawyer said to me on a call when I was dealing with a file,

00:12:35.980 unrelated, recently, that he believes that history will see this as a very dark period of,

00:12:45.820 for our judiciary and jurisprudence in general.

00:12:50.360 I think so too. You know, and there's something about judges as a group. I mean, obviously they're at

00:12:56.600 the height of their legal profession. By definition, almost judges are older. You don't have judges in

00:13:04.000 their 20s or even very often in their 30s. Judges are in their, at earliest, they're in their 40s,

00:13:10.240 really, at least senior judges.

00:13:11.680 Yes, for sure.

00:13:11.980 And they're more likely 50s and 60s. And some of the greatest judges are in their early 70s.

00:13:17.080 That's correct.

00:13:17.380 And the reason I mention that is they're forces of the establishment, they're forces of authority.

00:13:23.460 So they're naturally respectful of authority because that's their team. But more than that,

00:13:29.400 they were the ones who were statistically more at risk from the virus. And because judges aren't

00:13:38.340 going out to bars or to gyms or to nightclubs, that's not an important part of their life. They

00:13:43.740 just, they're sort of cocooning at home. It was easy for them to shut down bars and restaurants and

00:13:50.700 gyms and schools because there was no skin off their nose. And at the same time, they probably 0.91

00:13:55.620 knew some people who were old and then got sick and perhaps even died. I think of Adam Germain,

00:14:02.100 the atrocious liberal appointee judge in Alberta who first ruled in the case of Arthur Pawlowski.

00:14:08.640 It was the absurd ruling that Arthur Pawlowski, the pastor in Calgary, had to read out a self-denunciation

00:14:16.080 any time he gave a public interview or a Facebook post or a sermon questioning government lockdown

00:14:24.960 policy. Arthur Pawlowski was ordered by Adam Germain to immediately read out something that

00:14:30.320 Adam Germain wrote about what I've just said was not considered accurate by the guy. Like it was,

00:14:35.920 it was struck down by the court of appeal. But in his ruling, Adam Germain said,

00:14:39.880 would every one of us know someone who has died from COVID? And I thought, no, no, we don't. I don't.

00:14:47.520 Maybe you're an old scared judge who hasn't left the house other than to go to the country club

00:14:53.300 in a year, but you are living in fear and that's fine because you're never going to miss a paycheck

00:14:59.840 because you're a judge and everyone does what you say because you're a judge. There was perhaps no

00:15:05.640 force in no demographic group in the country worse to be the imposers of the lockdown than old scared 0.55

00:15:14.400 people who never go out to bars or restaurants or clubs or gyms and who happen to be the worst

00:15:18.640 hit demographic group of the virus. I think we were let down by the gerontocracy. What do you think of

00:15:25.080 that? I see it a little bit different. I take your point. What I see is this, you know, the decisions

00:15:32.380 were made, we know, in each province at the provincial level by the public health authorities

00:15:40.300 and or the cabinet, some combination of them. At the federal level, it was the federal cabinet,

00:15:45.740 you know, and at the school board level, some decisions were made by school boards

00:15:49.340 and some municipalities as well. But what I saw consistently and the case law is clear

00:15:56.660 is that no judge was prepared to even examine the evidentiary foundation of those mandate decisions,

00:16:10.880 of those restrictions, closing gyms and bars, closing schools, universities, forcing people to be

00:16:17.620 vaccinated, to work in the military or the police or the RCMP or to be a contractor at an airport and so on.

00:16:26.020 And what I mean by that is you'll see these decisions where the judge will say, well, you know,

00:16:37.760 clearly the vaccine is safe and effective, so it's really not that bad. They'll say two things.

00:16:44.320 The vaccine is safe and effective, so it makes sense that people are being expected to take it.

00:16:50.440 And number two, this is such a serious situation with so many people dying, we have to do it.

00:16:58.300 Well, what evidence is there that it's safe and effective, right? Or the deference, the relying on the government's experts.

00:17:05.260 Well, Ezra, you may remember it was breaking news by Rebel News when you interviewed me and when I was in the middle

00:17:10.600 of cross-examinations on the Peckford case, in particular Dr. Waddell, who's the head epidemiologist

00:17:15.440 for Public Health Agency of Canada. And I got her to admit under cross-examination that she and the

00:17:21.240 Public Health Agency of Canada had not recommended vaccination as a mitigation strategy for travellers.

00:17:29.060 So it wasn't them. And she also went on to say there was no scientific basis that would be effective.

00:17:33.420 So that never got to in front of a judge. But let me give another example. The phase, you know, I got Dr.

00:17:43.680 Larenko to admit in cross-examinations, and she's the head person at Health Canada, who paragraph one of

00:17:51.340 her affidavits says, I am the government official who approved the COVID-19 vaccines. So she's like the head

00:17:57.800 of the FDA in the US equivalent in Canada. And she, I got her to confirm that every other vaccine that

00:18:05.360 they've approved for general use in the population had to go through the animal trial, the phase one

00:18:10.260 clinical human, phase two clinical human trial, and then the phase three. And it was only after all

00:18:18.760 the effects were known, both in terms of effectiveness and adverse health events, after the phase three

00:18:23.980 trial, that they would approve it for safe use on the general population. And she confirmed that for the COVID vaccines,

00:18:33.280 the clinical, it was approved before the phase threes were completed, the phase threes were ongoing, expected to

00:18:41.580 complete in December of this year, and others not to be completed until 2024. So on what basis could a judge have

00:18:52.060 said, well, they're safe and effective, there was no evidence to support that. And if proper evidence was put

00:18:57.820 before the court, they would realize that they can't actually make that conclusion, because the phase threes

00:19:02.140 are going on. And not only that, it would become apparent that 10s of millions of Canadians took this

00:19:07.500 injection, without anybody telling them they were signing up for an experiment, a clinical phase three

00:19:12.700 trial, every other person who's been involved in a phase three trial, for for other vaccines, whether it's

00:19:19.260 pneumonia, or shingles or something, you had to be sat down and sign a big long series of legal forms

00:19:26.140 consenting to the risks and that you're part of an experiment. No Canadian of the 10s of millions who

00:19:32.620 took that shot, were given that warning, they didn't give proper informed consent. And just one other

00:19:38.860 point. When I cross examined the head of Stats Canada responsible for collecting death data,

00:19:45.020 one of the things that came out of his testimony was they were following, they adopted a World Health

00:19:51.100 Organization format and coding system. And that coding system was if someone died, and they did not have

00:20:02.060 a negative COVID test, so they haven't been tested for COVID and they die, you put it down as a COVID

00:20:07.500 death. Okay, so you and other jurisdictions have discovered the same thing. So that we have this

00:20:14.220 hugely inflated number of COVID deaths that were actually not COVID deaths. So the premise that

00:20:21.820 the pandemic was so severe, it warranted overriding similarities is based on something that was never

00:20:28.780 tested evidentiary in a court, which is the fundamental role of a court. The assumption that

00:20:34.620 what's the big deal forcing people to get vaccinated, it's safe and effective was never tested. We were so

00:20:40.700 close to testing it. We were ready for trial in the federal court and you know what happened. They

00:20:45.100 struck us out on mootness. You know, the whole thing was so large, a few lines come to mind like

00:20:51.020 too big to fail, like too many people were invested in it. Too many people had bet their future and their

00:20:56.860 reputation on it. No one wanted to be the one saying the emperor has no clothes here. We don't know if this

00:21:01.980 thing works. And you pointed out that the statistics were juiced to, I mean, I remember that incredible

00:21:09.740 case of someone who fell off a ladder and that was described as a COVID death because they were tested

00:21:15.340 and they had COVID and apparently that made them weak and felt like it was just such an absurd,

00:21:20.460 that was the most absurd case, but anything to plump up the number of COVID deaths. But on the contrary,

00:21:26.700 anyone who had a reaction to the vaccine, they took the opposite point of view, uh, and were extremely

00:21:33.100 strict in what could be called a vaccine injury. Listen, we're talking about some of the things that we

00:21:37.180 really went into in 2022 and 2023, but I want to talk about one. And, and this is good to remind ourselves

00:21:44.140 of the atrocious, uh, junk science and group think that we all lived through. And I'm, and I'm proud of the

00:21:51.900 role of rebel news. And I'm sure that you're proud of your role with the trucker convoy. And, but, um,

00:21:58.460 here we are on the, on the eve of 20 of 2024 and the most public dissidents are still facing

00:22:09.820 prosecution. And I think of our mutual friend Tamera Leach and I have never heard of a mischief

00:22:15.660 trial. Take this long. There was one mischief trial, some trial, some decades ago of a guy

00:22:21.260 who blew up power lines in Quebec. So a violent, I think you could even probably call that terrorism

00:22:30.460 because there was a political motivation, if I'm not mistaken. Now he was apparently charged with

00:22:35.260 mischief. That's quite some mischief. And it put tens of thousands of people, uh, to cut off power to

00:22:41.900 them. So there was, that's the worst mischief case I know of in Canadian history. But, but other than

00:22:48.700 that, I think that my knowledge, uh, I mean, you're, you're a practicing lawyer. I haven't practiced law

00:22:54.940 in almost 20 years, but mischief is what you charge someone. It's sort of a catch all for minor, like,

00:23:00.860 like some kids who take a baseball bat and smash a mailbox. That would be mischief. Graffiti.

00:23:08.060 That would be mischief. Vandalism, uh, doing something stupid, like egging a house on Halloween 0.99

00:23:14.380 and toilet papering. You wouldn't even face a mischief charge. Cops wouldn't even file it. But 0.99

00:23:19.260 if they did, you'd get a mischief charge. You'd go to court. The judge would have a stern lecture,

00:23:23.820 point his finger at you, make you say you're sorry, and either give you an absolute discharge

00:23:29.020 or say, all right, you've got to spend the weekend cleaning up the house you spray painted. Like,

00:23:35.340 that's mischief to me. Yep. You charge Tamera Leach with mischief. 1.00

00:23:42.060 And you put a prosecution team on it. And we're coming up on two years now. We've had 30 plus days

00:23:49.180 of trial. The process is the punishment. This is abusive process. This, this does not make sense

00:23:55.340 legally. I sat in court and I heard one bureaucrat talk all day about his feelings about the lockdown.

00:24:01.260 But early in his testimony, he admitted he had never had any interaction whatsoever

00:24:05.260 with Tamera Leach, never observed her, never talked to her, never heard anything. He had no

00:24:09.100 evidence whatsoever to give on the matter at hand, but he wanted to talk for an hour at the court's

00:24:13.500 time and the public's time and the prosecutor's time and the clerk's time and Tamera Leach's time

00:24:17.500 about his feelings about the, about the, uh, about the trucker convoy. Sorry, I said lockdown

00:24:21.980 earlier. What even is this trial and is the judge running a gong show?

00:24:30.700 Well, the judge has got to deal with the case that's brought before her. Uh, she's got to ensure

00:24:35.980 that the process is fair to both sides. And from what I've been able to glean, I think she's done an

00:24:42.620 exemplary job at that within, um, the high profile nature of the case. But, you know, let's be clear

00:24:50.460 here. It's just not the number of days of trial. And I know you understand this, but I want to make

00:24:55.740 clear for your viewers. Um, the days in between trial are just as painful and sometimes more so

00:25:01.980 than the actual days of trial. So this trial started on September 5th in the year 2023. Right. Um,

00:25:09.580 the crown closed its case in December. Um, and there have been arguing emotion, a technical motion

00:25:17.580 about what type of evidence can be admitted and attributed to parties. The ruling on that is

00:25:23.740 expected in January, mid January, and then the parties will come back. So the crown's closed its case

00:25:33.580 in a motion phase, and then the defense will put its case in if necessary,

00:25:38.940 closing arguments and then ruling. So they're going to come back in, in March

00:25:45.820 for a number of days to, uh, for the defense to argue basically for the charges to be thrown out

00:25:52.380 for a directed verdict that the crown hasn't met its burden and that there's no reasonable prospect

00:25:57.740 of a conviction. It will probably take the judge some time. It's possible she could issue a bench

00:26:03.500 ruling given she has now had an ample opportunity, perhaps given her other obligations because that 0.91

00:26:11.340 court is a very, very busy courthouse, um, to enter and issue a bench ruling in, in March and, and throw

00:26:18.780 this out. That'd be a small possibility of that. Um, but she's more likely to reserve her decision.

00:26:25.260 And so she may release a decision in June, uh, as to whether the charges are going to be stayed. Um,

00:26:34.940 if they're not, and some of them are, all of them are proceeding, and then we'd be into July and August

00:26:40.540 for, of 2024 for, uh, the defense's case to go in and probably into September and October for close.

00:26:50.700 So this trial will last, has the prospect to go on for more than a year. It's clearly,

00:26:56.060 it's long since per since passed the mark of getting the Guinness book of world records for

00:27:02.700 the longest mischief trial in the history of law, let alone Canada. That's clearly an award that one

00:27:09.740 doesn't want to achieve, but has been met. And, uh, when we look at the strain on our court systems,

00:27:16.780 when we look at the cases that are being thrown out because they're the delays in them being heard,

00:27:22.780 there's this Jordan rule that Supreme court can lay down that a case has to be heard in a reasonable

00:27:26.860 time. And if it's not, the charges have to go, there's examples that we know of, uh, that are

00:27:31.740 public, uh, where sexual assault, uh, charges have had to been dropped. Other serious offenses have had

00:27:38.060 to been dropped because the courts have not been able to process the case in a reasonable time. And in

00:27:43.820 the meantime, the crown prosecution service is forcing the courts and the defendants, uh,

00:27:51.900 the accused, Ms. Leach, Mr. Barber through this incredibly harsh process that to any reasonable

00:28:00.140 observer makes no sense. You just, it's, it's, it is very difficult to rationalize that this is anything

00:28:10.220 other than a form of political persecution, because it makes no sense by any historic standard,

00:28:18.380 by any normal standard of our justice system. Um, uh, they're using Ms. Leach, Mr. Barber

00:28:25.500 to put the convoy on trial, which is improper. In my view, that's clearly by looking at what's

00:28:31.340 been happening in the trial that they're trying to, um, criminalize the entirety of the largest,

00:28:37.500 most peaceful protest in Canadian history. Yeah. You know, I, I used a phrase some 15 years ago

00:28:44.860 when I was put through the Alberta human rights commission, uh, hate speech prosecution for

00:28:49.100 publishing the Danish cartoons. I remember that. And it was so long and so slow and so expensive

00:28:54.060 and so abusive that, um, you know, I'm sure others have said the phrase before, but the process

00:29:00.620 was the punishment. Absolutely. And you know, the amount of money that I, that they had wanted me

00:29:08.380 to pay was minor. It wasn't the money they wanted to rub my nose in it. They wanted me to submit.

00:29:13.980 They wanted to conquer my mind and, and make me bend the knee. And because I wouldn't, they said,

00:29:20.540 you know, it's not even about the money. We're going to put you through a three year process.

00:29:23.580 It was 900 days. And, uh, whereas if you just plead guilty, you're out of there that same day.

00:29:31.100 And, and the process is the punishment here. Now they had an insane out of control prosecutor,

00:29:37.900 major liberal donor. If I'm getting his name right, Moise Kashimji, if I got that right.

00:29:42.300 Who? Karimji. Karimji. Thank you very much. Karimji. Thank you for correcting me.

00:29:46.460 Um, Moise Karimji, who was such a hothead and so angry, it was unbecoming. And he was pulled off

00:29:56.300 the prosecution team almost the last moment. I mean, a few months before trial, but if you're

00:30:00.860 preparing for a trial for a year, that really is a late change. And so they, they pulled Karimji off

00:30:07.020 the case and they, um, handed it to a couple other prosecutors. And I saw them when I was in court.

00:30:12.540 And I, it really felt to me like this next team were sort of saddled with the case that

00:30:20.140 they had and they were saddled with the instructions. You must go all the way.

00:30:24.700 You must do what you can. And, and my hunch, and this is just speculation. I don't know what's in

00:30:29.900 their mind, but this B team that was put in to replace the out of control, angry guy said, well,

00:30:35.500 there's just no chance. There's nothing here. If there weren't the politics, we would withdraw the

00:30:40.460 case. Like hundreds of other cases have been withdrawn, but there's so much political pressure

00:30:44.940 here. We're just going to throw the kitchen sink at it. We're just going to stretch it out for months.

00:30:49.340 We're going to bring irrelevant witnesses. Like the one guy I saw who talked about his feelings all day.

00:30:54.860 And at the end of the day, they're going to lose, but they're going to have taught everyone a lesson

00:30:57.340 because they're going to have cost to Mary Leach hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thank God the

00:31:00.940 donors are picking that up. And I remember from, from my days as a lawyer, you proceed with the

00:31:08.860 prosecution. If there's a reasonable conviction of success, reasonable chance of conviction,

00:31:14.620 excuse me. And it's in the public interest and neither of those are here. This is, this is

00:31:21.740 absolutely. There's one more. Yeah. At no time is the crown to conduct him or herself in a way that

00:31:31.660 will bring the administration of justice into disrepute. And Karimji absolutely did. And I think

00:31:38.540 that they know that the cupboard is bare. They don't have anything on her. Their witnesses are all

00:31:44.380 political pundits or therapy sessions. They even had that witness that Zexi Lee, who's got the ambulance

00:31:50.780 chasing lawsuit for a hundred million bucks or more against the truckers. Like it really was a,

00:31:56.620 like a high school talent show. Everyone coming just to do their song and dance, just to fill the

00:32:00.940 time. And I think they're going to lose. They'll probably appeal anyways, just because the political

00:32:06.380 instructions to do so. But even as they lose, they'll have won because they'll have punished

00:32:12.220 Tamera Leach and the truckers and the lawyers and put the whole movement through it. I think this is

00:32:17.100 how this is what we would describe it in another country, a show trial, a sham trial,

00:32:22.860 a political trial, absolutely a political prisoner. And I take your point that the judge is doing her 0.72

00:32:26.940 best, but by God, the prosecutors here, they're the ones who brought the administration of justice

00:32:31.660 into disrepute. It's so infuriating. The only saving grace, Keith, is that Tamera Leach maintains her 1.00

00:32:38.620 good attitude. I mean, I saw her perform with her husband, some great musical numbers at Rebel News

00:32:46.540 Live a few months ago in Calgary. And I know she had that big concert in Niagara on the Lake

00:32:51.260 about a month ago. And she's happy, normal, positive, you know, happy warrior. I think it's sort of a

00:33:00.220 miracle that she herself has not become soured and jaded by this. I think that's how she's going to win,

00:33:05.500 by being positive while these angry government prosecutors flail about trying to hurt her.

00:33:10.540 I don't know. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm reaching, but I think that the only reason I would call this a

00:33:15.820 success so far is because of Tamera Leach's own demeanor. Well, there's three things I'd say on 0.77

00:33:21.740 that Ezra. One is ask yourself, why is it? So remember I was on the ground, the convoy arrived on a Friday,

00:33:33.100 the end of January, and then I arrived on the Wednesday and was there till the end with Tamera

00:33:41.900 and others trying to ensure that it was peaceful and lawful. But why is it on the Thursday,

00:33:50.140 almost three weeks later, before the police did the mass beating of lawful protesting Canadians

00:33:58.540 uh, and arrests that started on the Friday and into the Saturday? Why is it on the Thursday that

00:34:05.820 they arrested Chris Barber about four o'clock and then Tamera Leach at about seven o'clock?

00:34:11.660 Um, it was because in my view that they were trying to send a message like, well, I just arrest those

00:34:20.300 two, right? They were trying to scare the other protesters into leaving. Why is this trial going

00:34:30.540 on for a year? They're trying to scare other Canadians from protesting and challenging government.

00:34:39.740 There was symbolism. Their decision to arrest the two when they did was a symbolic step.

00:34:46.940 Yeah. The decision to run the trial is symbolic. Yeah. Now, but let me just, I have to give some color

00:34:55.900 and detail to what they've done to Tamera and Chris, but largely Tamera, is you talk about the process

00:35:07.340 being the punishment. And yes, Tamera puts on a brave face, but she's suffering.

00:35:11.660 She can't work. She can't get a job. Right. How can you go and try and get a job and say, Oh, I might 1.00

00:35:20.140 have to go off to Ottawa again for three more weeks. That's right. Yeah. She, you know, she pays 1.00

00:35:25.260 just the toll alone of her and Dwayne, her husband driving across the country the number of times they

00:35:30.940 have, miling out their pickup truck. Right. Uh, trying to drive, they drive all the way to Ottawa.

00:35:35.660 Yeah. And sometimes they're so eager to get home. The last two times they drove straight through,

00:35:42.700 did it in 35 hours, team driving, didn't get a hotel, nothing. You know what? I feel like

00:35:48.300 crowdfunding some flights for them. So they don't, maybe they want to have their car in Ottawa.

00:35:52.140 Maybe that's why, but, uh, well, and it's expensive for them to, to stay and, and eat and, and so on.

00:35:58.620 Now on top of that though, remember that she was in jail for 49 days and I was, I don't know how it

00:36:07.660 came up, but her and I were talking the other day and she, I don't know what we were talking about,

00:36:13.580 but it, it caused her to tell me about the condition she was in for a number of those days.

00:36:18.940 She was in a cell, uh, for, I think it was a total of seven days, uh, at different points where there

00:36:25.660 wasn't even a bunk. There wasn't a mattress. It was a concrete slab with cold air coming in.

00:36:30.860 She had nothing. Right. Yeah.

00:36:33.660 They didn't have to do that. She described it in her book. Yeah. I mean,

00:36:36.060 I learned a lot of terrifying things about her time in jail. Her book's amazing.

00:36:40.380 You know what? I'm so glad that she wrote that. And, um, as you know, we had the lawyer go through

00:36:45.740 it before we published it. Cause we didn't want that insane prosecutor to try and prosecute her for 1.00

00:36:50.140 the book for contempt of court. It's a great book. I thought I knew the story, but there's so many details,

00:36:54.780 including the abuse she took from the media. Normally you have a Métis woman leading a, 1.00

00:36:59.740 uh, a righteous civil liberties protest. She's going to be, you know, uh, the hero of the year. 0.98

00:37:04.620 She's going to be honorary professor. She's going to win every award, but they, they even tried to 0.68

00:37:08.620 deny her indigenous heritage because they, they were trying to destroy. And by they, I mean the, 1.00

00:37:13.260 the regime media, uh, you know, you're so right. And, and it reminds me of Trudeau's first reaction

00:37:18.940 to the trucker convoy. He was trying, he was delighted by it. He thought, oh good,

00:37:23.500 this is our January 6th Donald Trump style insurrection. We're going to paint them as

00:37:29.180 Trump style racist. I don't know. He threw in what xenophobes and homophobes. Like he just said,

00:37:35.100 he was just such a bizarre thing and he would have gotten away with it too. If he could have

00:37:39.740 controlled the narrative, but it was very proud rebel news really deployed into the streets.

00:37:44.220 We, uh, along with other independent journalists too, really was the independent journalists,

00:37:47.740 whether it was Rupa Subramania or I think true north had someone on the ground. Of course,

00:37:51.740 rebel news just flooded the zone. He wanted to have that January 6th moment and he wanted,

00:37:57.420 and we knew that you want to throw them all in jail.

00:38:00.140 But, and look at how, you know, and that was, we were completely, when I arrived there,

00:38:03.660 we were so alive to that, not just me, so many of the protesters and the truckers and those who were

00:38:09.660 volunteering to try and keep it orderly. That's why when I remember when someone came into one of the

00:38:15.500 operation centers and said, you know, we need to take some of these donations and go down and buy,

00:38:21.500 you know, 500 snow shovels approved. So off they went to buy all these snow shovels cleaned out every

00:38:29.260 Walmart, Home Depot, Canadian tire. Why? Because the truckers were going to make the sidewalks the

00:38:36.460 cleanest they've ever been in the history of Ottawa. There was garbage bags everywhere. We had a garbage

00:38:41.500 collection system. It was like, what are all of the things the prime minister's going to want these

00:38:46.540 guys to do to vilify them? And they were going to do the opposite. Hence this brilliant idea that some

00:38:51.660 came up with for the bouncy castles and so on. But, you know, and I just want to go circle back to

00:38:57.500 Tamara for one thing, because a lot of people don't realize what I'm about to say. And it's very important

00:39:01.820 that they do, which is she is still under her bail conditions. She cannot use social media.

00:39:09.420 And in our world today, you know, depriving someone of being able to utilize social media

00:39:17.900 is actually a very serious punishment. It's like 50 years ago saying to someone,

00:39:22.220 you can't use a telephone. Yeah. And you can't read a newspaper. You can't use a telephone and you can't

00:39:28.300 read a newspaper or listen, listen to the radio news. Right. Because that's what social media has

00:39:32.460 become all three of those. Right. She has people on her non-contact list, some of which we don't even,

00:39:38.220 we're still not even sure who they are, what they look like. Yeah. It was just random people. So she

00:39:43.660 has to be careful wherever she goes that one of these people don't happen to come up and say, 0.98

00:39:48.140 hey, can I have a picture with you? She doesn't really who was there and then bam, she's off to jail again. 1.00

00:39:51.740 Yeah. Um, she, she, her, her conditions are such that she's enduring a sentence right now. Right. 0.69

00:40:01.580 And this is remarkable. So the fact that she's being deprived of seeking employment,

00:40:06.460 the fact that she's incurring all these expenses, the fact that she can't use social media, these are

00:40:12.300 all punishments. And you mentioned the process is the punishment for sure. It's not just the courts.

00:40:18.300 It's just not the risk of the legal fees. It's really, unfortunately feels so badly

00:40:24.620 like the government, the ruling liberals are trying to scare other Canadians from exercising

00:40:31.500 their constitutional rights and challenging government decisions.

00:40:35.020 You know, a senior lawyer told me very early in the game when we were talking about what a disaster

00:40:39.580 these airport quarantine hotels were. Remember you had to stay in an airport hotel for thousands of

00:40:45.260 dollars for three days upon returning to the country. And I thought this can't possibly

00:40:50.620 be like, it's so absurdly abusive and punitive and stupid. And the senior lawyer said, yeah, 1.00

00:40:58.540 that's the point is so that each person who goes through with it tells a hundred people how awful it

00:41:03.340 was to scare those hundred from traveling, that it was abusive on purpose. And that's exactly what

00:41:09.020 they're doing to Tamir. And I, I'd like to remind people if they want to help Tamir,

00:41:13.100 I can think of three ways to do it. One is to help with the legal defense. As you know,

00:41:17.980 the democracy fund is crowdfunding the legal defense. And I don't want to tell you how much

00:41:21.660 money we've spent so far, but it is six figures, obviously. And you can do that at help tamir.com.

00:41:28.540 Just go to help tamir.com. And by the way, you'll get a charitable tax receipt

00:41:32.780 because that's a civil liberties, um, court case that's covered by that charity. And, um, if you want

00:41:39.260 to help on the rebel news side, as you know, we've had a reporter there every single day, Robert

00:41:42.780 Kraychik, you can help him at tamiratrial.com. We've got a few websites. And, um, if you haven't

00:41:52.060 read Tamir's book, she gets a royalty from those books. So, um, if you want to help Tamir personally,

00:41:59.900 I would encourage you to get a book. I think it's an excellent book. I read it. I thought,

00:42:03.740 oh, I know everything here. I don't need to read this book. I read the book and not only did I

00:42:07.740 really like, it was a fun, fun, I don't know, fun is the right word. It was an interesting read,

00:42:12.540 but I learned things about her that I didn't know. And I thought I knew a lot about her.

00:42:16.700 I think I doubled how much I knew about her by reading the book. So those are three things

00:42:20.380 you can do if you want to help the fight back. It's incredible to me that this is going to be

00:42:24.220 continuing into the spring. Uh, I'm glad to be a small part of the large team of Canadians,

00:42:31.260 including you, Keith, including her excellent lawyer in Ottawa, Lawrence Greenspan, who I have

00:42:36.060 really grown to like and admire. And by the way, I should say, Keith, and maybe you have a thought

00:42:40.940 on this. I think that the other journalists who are in the court on a daily basis, there's a CBC

00:42:46.460 journalist there every day. And there's a CP, there's a few other news agencies covering it every

00:42:51.820 day. I think they've been won over by Lawrence Greenspan. Like there's no way they're going to be

00:42:57.260 pro Tamera Leach journalists. But I think Lawrence Greenspan, his demeanor, his tone,

00:43:02.620 his command of the law, his sense of humor, his, he's just, he just feels like a great lawyer and a

00:43:09.180 bit of a, you know, some lawyers are naturally teachers. I think he's a great communicator.

00:43:13.980 I think that Lawrence Greenspan is, is excellent and is sort of, I'm not going to say winning the

00:43:19.100 CBC over because that's impossible. But the, the reporters there treat him with respect and they,

00:43:26.860 they listen to what he says because he's so obviously competent. That made me feel really

00:43:32.140 good to see that with my own eyes when I was there. Last word to you. What do you, how are you feeling

00:43:37.180 about the trial so far? I understand there's a chance you may be called as a witness yourself.

00:43:40.860 So you want to be very careful about what you say here, but is there anything you feel comfortable

00:43:45.180 saying about the trial so far? I mean, you've already given us some thoughts,

00:43:48.700 but do you want to, is there something? Yeah. Well, I would say that I think

00:43:51.980 what I believe might've happened here, because I have noticed a softening from the legacy media

00:43:58.700 and a more of a balanced approach in some of their reporting, not all it's hit and miss,

00:44:04.460 is that I think it's not only the advocacy and the tremendous skill that Lawrence Greenspoon and his

00:44:11.420 team as well as Diane Magus, Mr. Barber's lawyer have demonstrated as criminal lawyers. It's also the

00:44:17.820 poor quality of the evidence that has been put forward and the truth that's come out through that.

00:44:23.180 But I've also think that by sitting in the room and watching Tamara and seeing her outside of the

00:44:30.860 courtroom and, uh, they've really gotten to know who she is as a true, incredibly, uh, representative

00:44:41.900 good Canadian. And let me just close with one little vignette. It was in the first week of trial

00:44:47.740 and you'll know, cause the rebel news does this as well as Tamara and her husband and Mr. Greenspoon

00:44:53.900 and others, the legal team are getting close to in the morning as they're walking to the courthouse

00:44:58.860 and they come around the corner and all the cameras come on. And as she's walking, there was one morning

00:45:04.860 where, you know, and all the report you don't see is all the reporters and cameramen with their

00:45:09.660 cameras. They're running backwards. Right. Right.

00:45:11.980 And they usually have someone with a hand on them so they don't trip. Right.

00:45:15.180 Well, a bunch of the reporters global and others, I think there was a fellow might've looked like a

00:45:21.580 homeless guy with his bike and they tripped over his bike, knocked his bike over, knocked and broke the

00:45:29.420 cigarette out that was in the guy's hand. Tamara immediately spotted this, zigged over herself, 1.00

00:45:37.100 picked up his bike and checked to see if he was okay. Dwayne, her husband hung back and gave the guy a

00:45:45.020 smoke. Like that was Tamara right there. Right. 0.83

00:45:48.380 She saw a problem. She realized she had something to do with it because if she had not been walking,

00:45:54.060 even though it was the reporters being clumsy and not being concerned about who was around them,

00:45:58.380 she took ownership for it. She decided what she needed to do and she immediately acted to make it

00:46:03.740 right. And the reporters would have all saw that. Yeah.

00:46:06.060 And they probably would have thought of every other time that's happened, because it will happen many

00:46:09.660 times as people are walking backwards, trying to stay in focus with their camera in the shot.

00:46:15.900 They probably don't remember a single time, whether they were following a politician or

00:46:20.620 someone else of profile. And that person stopped immediately and felt that helping that person out

00:46:27.580 who had been harmed was the most important thing they could do at that moment. So that's Tamara Leach right 0.99

00:46:31.740 there. That's a great vignette. I appreciate you sharing that. Well, so Keith, it's great to catch up

00:46:36.140 with you. It was a bit of a reminder of the darkest days of the pandemic, but also a realization that

00:46:44.780 we are still going through the process as a punishment. And the pain that they're putting

00:46:51.100 Tamara Leach through now is meant as a warning to the rest of us. How dare you speak truth to power?

00:46:56.780 And I think it's incumbent upon each of us to realize that's what they're doing and to rededicate

00:47:01.580 ourselves to freedom and to the right to be nonconformist, especially in the face of an

00:47:08.540 authoritarian government. So great to catch up with you, Keith. And we'll stay in touch if you

00:47:12.700 are called as a witness in the trial. We'll certainly cover that as we cover every other day.

00:47:17.420 I say again, for those who want to help Tamara Leach with her legal defense fund, they can do so and get

00:47:21.900 a charitable tax receipt by going to helptamara.com. And that website resolves at the Democracy Fund page,

00:47:29.100 which is a charity for civil liberties. That's our show for today. Until next time,

00:47:34.700 on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters to you at home,

00:47:37.660 goodnight, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:47:43.260 you

Rebel News Podcast - December 22, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Trudeau never forgets an enemy — that's why Ottawa took Freedom Convoyers to court

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