Pro-Hamas activists recreated a scene from the assassination of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Sinwar in a Jewish residential neighborhood in Toronto. I objected to it, and was physically removed from the scene by police.
00:15:38.460You guys have the police for a rest of your friends.
00:15:40.980I've been arrested by the police because I refused to get off the public sidewalk.
00:15:59.120They said that I cannot be on the sidewalk because that inherently is a disturbance.
00:16:03.920They said that by standing there, and I wasn't even interviewing anyone, they said that that was such a disturbance that I would be arrested.
00:16:10.980And I think that's a little bit cowardly because arresting me, they know I'm not going to have a riot like there was last night in Montreal.
00:16:18.460They know I'm going to go easily because I'm a law-riding Canadian.
00:16:21.820They're afraid of the Hamas activists, and they're woke.
00:16:25.820And Olivia Chow approves, and Doug Ford approves, and Justin Trudeau approves.
00:16:30.580And so I am arrested for the first time in my life in my home city, the city where I pay taxes,
00:16:36.460because these people, and by these people, I mean these police, have been instructed not to touch the hate crime.
00:16:43.980I want you to film the hate crime across the street.
00:16:47.100They actually have reenacted Yaya Singlaur in the final moment.
00:16:51.220That would be like having a Hitler recreation.
00:16:54.540It would be like having someone dressed up as Hitler.
00:16:57.340In a neighborhood where Holocaust survivors live, they say that that is not a hate crime,
00:17:04.000and that for me to report on it is a crime.
00:23:16.700I was subject to one standard, but the pro-Hamas types were subject to another, lighter standard.
00:23:22.020Even though many of them aren't even Canadian nationals.
00:23:26.720There's a new sheriff in town, and it ain't the cops.
00:23:29.420It's the Hamas extremists for whom the cops act as concierge.
00:23:35.060This is very demoralizing, and that's the point.
00:23:37.720When these Hamas thugs do things like snarl traffic, like block important roads, block Union Station Subway in Toronto, block major roads and highways,
00:23:50.640they're not doing that to persuade people.
00:23:55.600They're doing that to show you who's dominant and who's submissive, to teach you the new rules, which is that they call the shots and you obey.
00:24:07.300The police follow their lead now, not the law.
00:24:10.060So the arrest of me was about the Overton window as much as anything.
00:24:15.320And it was about tamping down the one independent news company in Toronto and in some ways around the country that's willing to call out these things.
00:24:26.920So it was demoralizing from that sense.
00:24:28.960But I'm not going to be demoralized because I think the rebel way is when you're knocked down to get up, brush the dust off yourself, and get back to it.
00:24:37.480And not just to get back to the journalism, but in this case to sue the Toronto Police Service and Officer McDuff.
00:24:43.440Now, I heard something today that Efron, our head of video, mentioned that I didn't have a chance to look at.
00:24:50.060Olivia, maybe you can show it to me at the same time we show our viewers.
00:24:53.380And that is I was on an interview with Jerry Agar, who's a talk show host here in Toronto on News Talk 1010.
00:25:01.320And he was nice enough to have me on the show.
00:25:04.120And basically I said the things I've just said here.
00:25:07.600But apparently Jerry called the Toronto Police for comment on this, which is a good idea.
00:37:56.980Well, it's 1.38 and I've been talking a lot about my very exciting weekend.
00:38:02.500I'm trying to, oh, there's a, there's a Rumble rant from Ryerson Gary.
00:38:06.680It's nice to support the blue, referring to the police.
00:38:11.080However, until the rank and file and their unions speak up how the police elite treat Hamas, one can only assume that they one and all are in silent agreement.
00:38:26.200And just when I start to think so, when I get so depressed about the police, fate has it that I bump into a cop who says, you know what, there's a, there's an officer.
00:38:43.440It's where you're first taken and they search you and they take your belongings and you sign that and, and they ask you about, do you have a medical issue or this and that.
00:38:53.080And so it's, it's sort of a hole in jail.
00:38:57.640And I'm not going to tell you which cop it was, but I was talking to a bunch of them.
00:39:02.880And those were not the guys that ordered me arrested.
00:39:05.720So I was, you know, engaging in banter and chatter and just try, you know, I was trying to keep my own spirits high by being upbeat.
00:39:14.480I sort of knew that I would get out that day.
00:39:17.320I didn't, I was certain they wouldn't hold me overnight because they had nothing.
00:39:20.980And I'm not going to say I became friends with the cops.
00:39:23.160I was only there for a couple hours, but it was friendly enough that on my way out the door when I literally was leaving them, I'm not even, yeah, I'm not going to tell you which cop it was.
00:39:30.800But he said, we should have a drink sometime.
00:39:36.180He said, we should have a drink sometime.
00:39:39.820And it's not because of my scintillating personality.
00:39:42.880It's because, you know, he, you know, I, we didn't get, he was following the rules and he was doing his job, but he could tell that this was a political arrest.
00:39:52.880And I obviously was, it was a, in fact, it wasn't even political.
00:39:56.460It was just that Officer McDuff didn't like the fact that I spoke back to him and called him out as a servant, not of our law, but of a servant of Hamas.
00:40:07.980It's been interesting to see the public reaction.
00:42:09.500I haven't been following the news with Alex Jones, but I think that's coming up in about 45 minutes.
00:42:16.380There's a little bit more interest in Canada this time around than there normally is.
00:42:21.000Normally, Canadian media are absolutely silent about the fate of Rebel News and when we're arrested.
00:42:27.580In fact, if you listen to the whole Jerry Agar interview, and we tweeted it out, someone texted in, oh, there's people who say, oh, Rebel News loves being arrested.
00:42:41.860They must love being arrested because they're arrested so much.
00:43:40.420That I don't have a charter two, section two of the charter right to be there?
00:43:45.560The Constitution of Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedom, section 2B, gives me freedom of the press.
00:43:51.400Not freedom of the press subject to what some cop finds more convenient.
00:43:57.520And by the way, look at all the thugs who were marching along there.
00:44:00.420If I was really causing a disturbance, why were they coming along?
00:44:05.420And why weren't the police tamping them down?
00:44:09.640You know, I want to show you a case, a legal case.
00:44:13.040It's from our Supreme Court of Canada.
00:44:15.140I only heard about this case yesterday because I, although, you know, frankly, I'm sort of surprised I haven't heard about it before because it's sort of up my alley.
00:44:28.700And it's a case called Fleming versus Ontario.
00:44:34.560And it's a Supreme Court case, and I'm just calling it up on my screen, and we've got it there for you, too.
00:44:41.760I'm going to read what's called the head notes.
00:44:52.700And if you want to put that on the screen, I'll read through this.
00:44:56.120So by the way, let me just tell you a little something about how Supreme Court rulings are published.
00:45:00.820So the courts, the judges put their heads together, and they have clerks, and they sort of negotiate how they write this thing.
00:45:10.780And scroll down a little bit, right to there, perfect.
00:45:14.120And so they write a court ruling, and in this case, the court ruling is, oh, I can't see how many pages long, but it's quite long, as Supreme Court rulings are.
00:45:26.240So there's a summary of the case called a head note.
00:45:29.740And I'm going to read the head note, because obviously I'm not going to read, like, a multi-page court ruling to you.
00:45:36.260So you can see the case is called Fleming v. Ontario, and it's from 2019, so it's fairly recent.
00:45:44.800You can see the names of the judges, Wagner, Abella, Moldeva, Cote, etc.
00:45:49.480So this was an appeal from the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
00:45:54.060So this case had ricocheted around Ontario, and it was important enough that the Supreme Court thought they would weigh in on it.
00:46:02.800Counterprotestors are charged with obstructing police, but charged later withdrawn.
00:46:20.520Counterprotestors are filing statement claim against province and police officers seeking general damages for assault and battery, wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, aggravated or punitive damages and damages for violations of various constitutional rights.
00:46:35.180Whether police have common law power to address, to arrest someone acting lawfully in order to prevent apprehended breach of peace by others.
00:46:42.500Okay, that was sort of sentence fragments, but you see, so Fleming didn't do anything wrong.
00:46:53.920Other people were going to breach the peace if Fleming was there, so cops arrest Fleming.
00:47:00.900Well, maybe that ought to be my mental name.
00:47:03.520Now, I'm going to read a little bit more.
00:47:04.840So again, this is still part of the head note, okay?
00:47:06.980I'm not going to take too much time, but this is the top court in Canada.
00:47:10.800This is binding on every cop in the country.
00:47:16.440Fleming was arrested while walking to a counter-protest flag rally organized in response to Six Nations protesters' occupation of a piece of crown land.
00:47:28.240There's a dispute between Indigenous folks and other folks about who gets to be on the land.
00:47:32.800The police became aware of the flag rally in the months preceding it and had developed an operational plan, given the contentious atmosphere in the community, which had on numerous occasions culminated in violent clashes between the two sides.
00:47:46.780There's some similarities here, aren't there?
00:47:49.940The plan included keeping protesters and counter-protesters apart.
00:47:53.620And flag rally counter-protesters were informed that they were not allowed on the occupied property.
00:47:59.140When the police spotted Fleming walking on the shoulder of the road, running along the occupied property, they headed toward him with the intentions of placing themselves between him and the entrance to the property.
00:48:09.240To avoid the police vehicles, Fleming stepped onto the occupied property, which appeared to cause a reaction in a group of protesters, some of whom began moving toward him.
00:48:18.360An officer then approached Fleming and told him he was under arrest to prevent a breach of the peace.
00:48:22.840When Fleming refused to drop the flag he was carrying, he was forced to the ground, handcuffed, placed in an offender's transport unit van, moved to a jail cell and released two and a half hours later.
00:48:32.220Sounds familiar, although they didn't slam me on the ground.
00:48:35.140The Crown eventually withdrew the charge of obstructing a police officer, which had been laid against Fleming for resisting his arrest.
00:48:42.780Fleming subsequently filed a statement of claim, so he sued the province and the police officers who had been involved in his arrest.
00:48:49.680He claimed general damages for assault and battery, wrongful arrest and false imprisonment, as well as aggravated or punitive damages and damages for the violation of his rights.
00:49:12.480Fleming was successful at trial, but a majority of the Court of Appeals set aside the award of damages on the basis that the police had the authority at common law to arrest him.
00:49:20.180The Court of Appeals ordered a new trial solely on the issue of excessive force.
00:49:24.160Fleming appeals to the court on the issue of whether the police acted lawfully in arresting him and on whether a new trial should have been ordered on the question of excessive force.
00:49:32.960Okay, so that's the head note, but just give me the next paragraph.
00:49:45.720The following sentence is the summary of the entire case.
00:49:48.660Fleming's arrest was not authorized by law, and there is no basis for intervening in the trial judge's conclusion that the province and the police were liable for battery for their use of force in unlawfully arresting him.
00:50:06.120As a result, no new trial is needed on the issue of excessive force.
00:51:24.020What's so amazing about my interaction yesterday, if I may, is that the cops were narrating what they were doing because I was asking them the whole time.
00:51:32.940It's not like I was standing there and they swooped in and arrested me and I said, hey, what's going on?
00:51:40.380We had the conversation for minutes and minutes and minutes before they arrested me.
00:52:15.540Nor was there evidence that he had himself been about to commit an indictable offense or a breach of the peace.
00:52:22.040The province and the police have not sought to challenge that finding on appeal, nor have they cited or relied on any statutory power to arrest Fleming.
00:52:30.760They rely entirely on a common law power to arrest someone who is acting lawfully in order to prevent an apprehended breach of the peace by other persons.
00:52:46.660And it sounds like you need a judge to tell you that.
00:52:50.340In light of this conclusion, a new trial on the issue of excessive force is not necessary.
00:52:54.240As the police were not authorized the common law to arrest Fleming, no amount of force would have been justified for the purpose of accomplishing the task.
00:53:03.400You know, in law school, they use Latin, and they would say QED quod erat demonstrandum.
00:53:11.080Just demonstrated the whole point there.
00:53:13.780I know we spent a lot of time on that, but do you feel smarter?
00:53:16.280Olivia, do you feel smarter about the law?