Rebel News Podcast - March 31, 2021


Vaccine passports are coming, aren’t they?

Topics
Mentioned
A Chinese diplomat mocks Trudeau — and accidentally tells the truth Ontario prepares new digital ID card for your vaccine status

Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

169.96

Word count

5,895

Sentence count

452

Harmful content

Misogyny

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

9

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Vaccination passports are coming to Canada, but is there any opposition to them? I'll take you through it, and explain why I'm opposed to them, and why I think it's a bad idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. You know, I got to tell you, I really think it's coming. I think that we are
00:00:03.920 going to have vaccine passports. I see that New York State is already rolling them out, 0.99
00:00:09.500 but they're being met with some opposition. We see some governors in other states saying never,
00:00:14.820 never. But in Canada, is there actually any opposition to them? I'll take you through it,
00:00:19.400 and I'll explain why I'm opposed to it. That's next. Before I get to that, let me invite you
00:00:23.460 to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. Just go to rebelnews.com, click subscribe. It's the
00:00:28.800 video version of this podcast. You also get Sheila Gunn-Reed's videos every week, David Menzies.
00:00:36.320 By the way, Sheila has a great video this week of her interview with Pastor James Coates,
00:00:40.700 just released from prison in Alberta. That's on the show today. Anyways, it's eight bucks a month,
00:00:45.820 which is, what, half the price of Netflix? And it keeps us strong because it's what we rely on to
00:00:51.940 be independent. Anyways, thanks for your support. Here's today's podcast.
00:00:58.800 Tonight, vaccine passports are coming, aren't they? It's March 30th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:16.900 Trudeau is good at posing for selfies and giving banal speeches that you forget the minute they're
00:01:43.400 over. Hey, it's worked for him and probably will again in this year's federal election. But
00:01:47.980 he's never actually done something. He hasn't run a business. He hasn't really held a job
00:01:53.420 until becoming an MP. So negotiating for pandemic vaccines against every other country in the world
00:02:01.300 pretty much was the most awful test of his abilities or lack thereof, wasn't it? I mean,
00:02:06.680 the guy's first instinct was to sign a deal with a company that no one ever heard of called CanSino or
00:02:12.040 CanSino, a Chinese vaccine maker associated with the People's Liberation Army. I don't think you
00:02:19.220 needed to be a psychic to know how that was going to end. But you see my point? Normal political leaders,
00:02:24.680 normal business leaders, normal health leaders would have thought, okay, who are the great
00:02:29.460 pharmaceutical companies in the world? In the West? Probably. Because the West has excellent
00:02:35.100 science, but also reliable corporate culture, reliable safety culture, etc. I'd probably include
00:02:41.360 Japan in that. I wouldn't really want to take a China-made medicine for anything, would you? Although
00:02:47.820 that said, we know that a lot of our own Western medicines are manufactured in China. But I wouldn't
00:02:53.460 want something developed by them, certainly not by the Chinese army, would you? For the same reason,
00:02:58.800 I'd probably skip the Russian vaccine too, but not Trudeau. He wanted the Chinese brand. That was the
00:03:06.180 one he signed up for right away, even though at the time they had kidnapped two Canadian citizens
00:03:10.280 and were banning our agriculture and generally waging a soft war against us. Now compare that to
00:03:15.700 Donald Trump, who declared Operation Warp Speed to get vaccines manufactured, approved, developed at
00:03:22.080 record time, something that the Brits did too, and the Europeans. So there's Pfizer and
00:03:28.720 Moderna and AstraZeneca and others. I'm skeptical of any vaccine rushed to market. I'm skeptical of
00:03:35.740 taking medicine for a disease that more than 99% of people recover from. But my main point is Trudeau had
00:03:43.940 to out-compete everyone in the world, right? 200 countries or so. So he had to out-compete everyone from
00:03:48.980 Trump to India's Modi to China's Xi Jinping to Boris Johnson. In a real world, real deliverables,
00:03:57.520 can you get vaccines for the people who want them? So it's not, did you like the speech? It's,
00:04:01.960 where's the vaccines? Trudeau hasn't, can't, won't, whatever. In the real world, all that matters are
00:04:07.680 results, and he can't. Now there's two things to say about this. First of all, without vaccines,
00:04:13.460 things have gotten better anyways. That's the good news. Without vaccines, the number of people
00:04:19.580 in hospital in Ontario has fallen in about half just since January. And here's Quebec, the worst
00:04:27.560 province for the virus, absolutely plunging if you look at the graph. Again, my point is it's doing
00:04:33.700 that pretty much without vaccines because Trudeau didn't get any. Here's a chart generated from the
00:04:39.660 data at Johns Hopkins University. Israel, which leads the world in percentage of population
00:04:44.840 vaccinated, is pretty much exactly the same result as South Africa, which has vaccinated almost no one.
00:04:54.260 Here's the reckless governor of California calling the governor of Texas reckless for lifting the mask
00:05:00.760 laws and other lockdowns in Texas. Now that was about a month ago, that tweet. But here's the data
00:05:05.980 from the New York Times on Texas cases pretty much gone. My point of showing you this data is the
00:05:14.160 good news is nature is working. However, it's almost like the virus is just a really bad flu season,
00:05:20.420 about triple the death toll of a normal flu season. And that's not good. But it's not Ebola. It's not
00:05:26.360 the plague. It's nowhere near the top cause of death. In Ontario, the biggest province, not a single
00:05:32.300 child has ever died from it. Not one, thank God. But of course, the public health deep state loves
00:05:38.080 the lockdown. They love the spending. They love the power. They love the control. They love the
00:05:42.200 distraction from other problems. They love the fear that will make people do whatever they want.
00:05:47.140 They love the new flag of lockdownism, the mask. Here's Joe Biden telling states to force people to
00:05:52.600 put masks on again. I'm reiterating my call for every governor, mayor, and local leader to maintain
00:05:59.020 and reinstate the mask mandate. Please, this is not politics. Reinstate the mandate if you let it
00:06:07.080 down. And business should require masks as well. The failure to take this virus seriously,
00:06:14.620 precisely what got us in this mess in the first place, risks more cases and more deaths.
00:06:20.100 Deaths. Look, as I do my part to accelerate the vaccine distribution and vaccinations,
00:06:27.380 I need the American people to do their part as well. Mask up. Mask up. It's a patriotic duty.
00:06:36.180 It's the only way we ever get back to normal.
00:06:40.840 Yeah, no, it's just a symbol. I don't know why Aaron O'Toole is putting on a mask. You know he
00:06:46.300 got the virus, right? And he got better from it. He's immune. So he's just putting on a mask as a
00:06:51.620 symbol of his belief system. So first it was panic and lockdown. Then it was masks. Now it's vaccines.
00:06:58.360 I mentioned Trudeau's screw up because he did manage to get his hands on a ton of AstraZeneca
00:07:03.860 vaccines. But maybe there's a reason why. Here, take a look at this weird news. This is a little
00:07:09.140 snapshot from the front page of today's Toronto Star, Canada's largest newspaper by circulation.
00:07:14.440 One of Canada's countless public health boards now says you should not take the AstraZeneca vaccine
00:07:21.880 if you're over 64, and you should not take it if you're under 55. That's just a pretty small
00:07:28.640 bandwidth. So just 55 to 64-year-olds, just those people. It's too dangerous if you're under 54.
00:07:36.060 It's too ineffective if you're over 65. I think that's what it is. Who knows? Maybe they'll tell 0.99
00:07:40.900 something else tomorrow. Normally you don't hear this after. You've already given countless people
00:07:46.860 the jab. But then again, normally vaccines aren't rushed to market in a matter of months,
00:07:52.060 circumventing the regular tests. Here's a scoop from Gateway Pundit, one of my favorite U.S.
00:07:57.400 investigative websites. It's the Center for Disease Control's count of people who have died from the
00:08:03.420 vaccine, showing that it's greater in the last year than in the last decade combined. But hey,
00:08:11.940 there's lots of money in it. I showed you a couple weeks ago how excited Pfizer is about not just one
00:08:18.000 jab, but two jabs, and now adding a third jab. I mean, why sell only one when you can sell two,
00:08:22.860 and why sell only two when you can sell three? Maybe there'll be a fourth jab, or onto two or three
00:08:27.100 masks now. And so now we approach vaccine passports. Isn't that amazing? Compelling people to buy your 0.54
00:08:34.620 product. They're coming. Absolutely they're coming. For about two minutes, Canadian politicians
00:08:40.300 pretended they weren't coming. We want to encourage and motivate people to get vaccinated as quickly as
00:08:46.500 possible. Getting as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible is the way to restore a
00:08:52.340 semblance of normality in the coming months. And of course, we're going to make decisions
00:08:56.640 step by step and look at all sorts of different ways both to encourage people to get vaccinated
00:09:01.560 and keep people safe. The idea of certificates of vaccination for international travel
00:09:09.200 exist already and are well established. There are countries in the world where you
00:09:13.280 shouldn't go unless you can prove that you've been vaccinated against certain tropical diseases,
00:09:18.600 for example. That's well established. But the idea of certificates of vaccination for domestic use,
00:09:25.820 to decide who can go to a concert or who can go to a particular restaurant or engage in certain
00:09:32.320 activities, does bring in questions of equity, questions of fairness. There are some people who,
00:09:39.240 because of medical conditions or other reasons, will not be able to get vaccinated. There are others
00:09:43.700 who are not on priority lists, who will have to wait much longer before getting vaccinations.
00:09:48.660 These are things that we have to take into account so that, yes, we're looking to try and encourage
00:09:53.940 everyone to get vaccinated as quickly as possible, but we're not discriminating and bringing in
00:09:58.680 unfairness in the process at the same time. Yeah, but they just can't stay away. It's a whole new
00:10:03.780 industry, a lot of money, a lot of contracts, a lot of control. It's a good way to keep paranoia up to
00:10:10.000 pit us against each other. Snitches have already been bad enough. People who snitch on their neighbors
00:10:16.220 for having grandma over to come visit, imagine now snitching on someone who hasn't had medicine. 1.00
00:10:23.440 But you have to do it. You have to take a vaccine. They said to take AstraZeneca. Now they say that's
00:10:29.060 too dangerous to do. They say to take Moderna and Pfizer. Those are those mRNA vaccines that actually
00:10:36.560 interact with your body's genes. That's not generally called gene therapy. But, you know,
00:10:44.720 sometimes it is called gene therapy. Maybe it's completely safe. Look, I don't know.
00:10:51.200 We thought AstraZeneca was safe. I don't know. It's a new technology that works on your body.
00:10:58.560 It's the kind of thing I'd like to wait a bit just to have it tested a bit more before we inject
00:11:04.520 healthy people with it. I mean, what do I know, though? I mean, Bill Gates says it's just fine.
00:11:12.540 One final way that's new and is promising is called the RNA vaccine. With RNA and DNA,
00:11:19.580 instead of putting that shape in, you put instructions in the code to make that shape.
00:11:24.860 I don't know. Here's a shot of Florida these days. They're doing better than lockdown states
00:11:31.060 like California and New York. I showed you Texas and their graph. Here's Las Vegas. They're out in
00:11:36.560 the sun. They're obviously feeling some peer pressure to go to the gym and get fit, get healthy,
00:11:41.040 exercise well, eat well. I think they're a bit healthier than people in Canada who have been
00:11:47.100 told to stay home, don't go out, don't go to the gym, don't go to the playground, just stay home,
00:11:50.940 watch Netflix, and order fast food delivered to your house. How do you think? I'm getting extra fat.
00:11:54.940 It's because, you know, if I was living in Vegas, look at that lifestyle there. Doesn't that make
00:11:58.800 you want to get fit? I think we're becoming prisoners psychologically. We're already physically
00:12:05.100 prisoners, especially in Quebec, with their curfew. How can a free people accept a curfew for so long?
00:12:11.760 There's a disconnect, though. I keep seeing stories in the news about how few doctors and nurses and
00:12:17.200 hospital workers are choosing to take the vaccine. Isn't that alarming? It would be like a chef who
00:12:21.680 refuses to eat his own cooking. That would be odd. And yet you have our political class lining up to
00:12:28.040 make it mandatory for the little people. But how would that work? How can you compel someone to take 0.98
00:12:33.200 a medicine, especially medicine that is potentially dangerous or that we simply don't know enough about
00:12:38.800 yet? How do you compel someone to do that, especially if they're not sick? Whatever happened to being
00:12:43.960 pro-choice? Keep your laws off my body. Where did those people go? It's not just the forcing of the
00:12:49.820 vaccine. It's what the vaccine surveillance apparatus will do to all of us, combine our
00:12:55.520 social credit score with our medical reports, with our right to work and travel, and the rest of the
00:13:01.440 modern panopticon, keeping track of everything about us, our bank records, etc. I'm somewhat worried
00:13:08.940 about the vaccines. I really don't feel the need to take them myself. Plus, I'm not between the ages of
00:13:15.020 55 and 64. But I'm deeply worried about a society that allows total surveillance and obedience at all
00:13:21.020 times, permission to do everything. You have to ask for permission in advance or you can't do it
00:13:26.060 anymore. Remember that summer jobs grant that you had to swear an attestation that you support Trudeau's
00:13:32.240 views on abortion, for example, before you can get a summer jobs grant? If they have a total control
00:13:37.480 over you through a vaccine app, of course they could use that for anything else they deem politically
00:13:42.280 necessary. If you're having trouble with this idea, imagine if this vaccine passport were for any 0.79
00:13:49.740 other disease. Let's pick a political disease, AIDS. People have a lot of views on AIDS. Where's your
00:13:56.440 AIDS passport? Prove you're not sick. Prove you're not at risk. And then show the whole world, tell the
00:14:01.760 whole world, any stranger, any shopkeeper, any politician, any policeman, show them that you don't
00:14:06.980 have AIDS. Show them that you're not at risk. Tell the whole world about your health or don't live
00:14:10.700 freely anymore. You know, you don't need to show ID to vote either in Canada or the United States. You
00:14:16.780 know that? But now you need not just ID, but a passport to go around your own country. And not
00:14:23.540 just a passport. Your private health information to go to your corner shop. Completely illegal without
00:14:29.260 a passport. And yet the civil liberties groups are silent. I think they love it. Here's America's
00:14:36.740 best governor. This is a story in the New York Post. I'm going to read the whole thing to you.
00:14:41.320 Governor DeSantis vows to ban vaccine passports in Florida. I like this guy. Florida Governor Ron
00:14:45.800 DeSantis on Monday vowed to take executive action to stop the use of so-called COVID-19 vaccine
00:14:51.300 passports in the state. Quote, it's completely unacceptable for either the government or the
00:14:55.240 private sector to impose upon you the requirement that you show proof of vaccine to just simply be
00:15:00.160 able to participate in normal society, he said. You want the fox to guard the hen house? I mean,
00:15:04.320 give me a break. The Republican governor added, I think this is something that has huge privacy
00:15:08.900 implications. It is not necessary to do. DeSantis said the Sunshine State will have vaccinated a total
00:15:15.160 of 3.5 million seniors or about 75 percent of them sometime this week. Quote, it's important to be
00:15:20.420 able to do it, but at the same time, we are not going to have you provide proof of this just to be
00:15:25.580 able to live your life normally, DeSantis said. He added, and I'm going to be taking some action in an
00:15:30.780 executive function and emergency function here very shortly. DeSantis' comments come after it
00:15:35.960 was revealed that the Biden administration is working on creating a set of standards for more
00:15:39.860 than a dozen passports being created so Americans can prove they've been vaccinated against the
00:15:45.140 coronavirus. New York is the first state in the U.S. to formally launch such an app.
00:15:50.260 The program dubbed the Excelsior Pass is an app that allows New Yorkers to prove their vaccination
00:15:55.780 status or a recent history of a negative COVID-19 test in order to gain entry to events and businesses.
00:16:03.300 Major venues such as Madison Square Garden and the Times Union Center in Albany will begin using the
00:16:08.420 app this week, and on April 2nd, Excelsior Pass will expand to smaller arts, entertainment, and event
00:16:13.200 venues, Governor Andrew Cuomo's office has said. It's terrifying. Now, do you think it's just about
00:16:20.580 health? Here's a tweet from Asha Regappa. She's a CNN commentator, but she's a former prosecutor. 0.95
00:16:27.160 Listen to this. Don't want a vaccine passport? Fine. How about a tax for those who refuse to get 0.92
00:16:33.980 vaccinated? Proportional to the additional costs and burdens they impose on society as a result of 1.00
00:16:38.740 needing to have the freedom, in scare quotes, to spread the potentially COVID variant-infected
00:16:43.940 aerosol everywhere. You know what? I see that kind of commentary everywhere, especially
00:16:50.520 from prosecutors who are just salivating over using this as a weapon. The fact that we're
00:16:58.240 actually debating these vaccine passports is shocking, but it shouldn't be. We've been
00:17:02.520 conditioned for this. Two weeks to flatten the curve, they said, or two years, whatever.
00:17:07.300 Stand six feet apart, or not if you're an important person on an airplane. Don't go outside. Don't go to
00:17:12.980 the gym. Don't let your kids play sports, but professional athletes are exempt from that. 0.90
00:17:17.140 Don't go to church. Go to Walmart. Empty the prisons. Put a pastor in prison. Don't wear masks.
00:17:23.760 Then you must wear masks. Now you must wear two. And in Montreal, a curfew for every man and woman
00:17:30.680 to be treated like a child. Still in effect today. And here we are a year later. Of course, vaccine
00:17:36.520 passports are coming. At least in America, you have some conservative leaders pushing back.
00:17:41.140 You've got 50 states. They have a fair bit of independence from the feds. You have Republicans
00:17:45.660 in Washington fighting the idea, too. In Canada? Name me one politician who has said he's against
00:17:51.560 it and who means it. Stay with us for a moment.
00:17:58.560 Actually, I think I told you about my visits to Tommy Robinson when he was in Belmarsh Prison,
00:18:03.600 in the UK. Basically, they're Guantanamo Bay. Some of the treatment reported by Pastor James Coates
00:18:11.240 is similar to what solitary confinement in that British version of Guantanamo was like,
00:18:17.140 at least the way he tells it. It's a terrifying story. Pastor Coates gave his last interview before
00:18:21.920 he was sent to jail to Sheila Gunn-Reed of Rebel News. And he gave his first interview out of jail
00:18:27.920 to Sheila Gunn-Reed. So let me show you this. About 20 minutes. It's worth watching. Here's Sheila 0.95
00:18:34.180 talking to Pastor James Coates. Pastor James, first, how are you doing? Emotionally, spiritually? How are
00:18:41.680 you doing? Yeah, that's a fantastic question. I am trying to figure out how I'm doing. I don't know
00:18:47.600 that I've quite gotten my feet on the ground as yet. I think I'm still adjusting to just everything
00:18:54.240 that's happened since my imprisonment and don't really have a clear handle on just what kind of
00:19:01.540 world I'm stepping into at this point in time. I'm obviously out of the rhythm of my routine,
00:19:08.220 and a big part of that routine is preaching. And so I look forward to that. It's been a blessing to be
00:19:14.280 here and to reconnect with our people and express my love for them and to have them express their love
00:19:21.640 for me. But I'm adjusting and I can't quite put my finger on what the adjustment is or why. I'm
00:19:29.840 feeling it's an adjustment, but it's an adjustment. And I'm thankful to be out and I'm thankful to be
00:19:35.780 here. And I'm looking forward to just putting one foot in front of the next and taking it one day at a
00:19:40.960 time. Now, I don't want you to rehash or relive anything, but what was a day like for you behind
00:19:50.180 bars? Did you have a cellmate? How often were you able to talk to Aaron? Without, you know,
00:19:57.440 the gruesome, gory details, what was a day like? In quarantine, it was a challenge because I would
00:20:03.920 get out twice for 15 minutes a day. I can remember one day, I think I told my wife that I had been in
00:20:10.940 my cell for 23 hours between exercises. And when you get out, you got 15 minutes and that's not a
00:20:20.020 long time. So that was a little bit of a challenge, but I was able to get through it and get into a bit
00:20:28.000 of a groove. And initially, you're just trying to learn the culture that you're in. And there's a
00:20:32.840 way that things happen and you're just trying to learn it. So you're up to speed and that takes
00:20:37.860 some time. And so I could kind of be distracted a little bit just by that entire process. Once I
00:20:42.460 got out of quarantine, I did have a cellmate and, you know, he was a good cellmate. We got along well
00:20:51.320 and had lots of good discussions and conversations. And he's called me since I've been out already twice
00:20:58.260 now. And so, you know, the morning begins around seven o'clock with breakfast. You go down to get
00:21:05.060 breakfast, you have your breakfast, and then you return your trays. And then you're in your cell for
00:21:10.700 a couple of hours, usually at least until nine, you might get out for an hour, typically got out for an
00:21:16.380 hour ahead of lunchtime. And lunch was 11. And then you would get out once for an hour between lunch and
00:21:23.620 supper. And then you would get out for another hour, typically between supper and bedtime. And for
00:21:31.780 that hour, I would spend a lot of time on the phone for sure. I would call my wife a lot. That
00:21:38.220 was obviously a highlight for me in the day. I loved those conversations. I'd have chaplains visit
00:21:44.540 me from time to time. I could play a little bit of basketball on the court outside, which is basically
00:21:52.560 just a cement cube with no roof. And, and just interact with the guys. It was, they were pretty good to me.
00:22:01.660 They treated me well. Have a neat story about the final moment leaving that I can share with you if you'd like
00:22:08.120 to know. But that gives you a little bit of a taste of a normal day.
00:22:12.920 What was the worst part or the hardest thing to adjust to?
00:22:16.600 That's a great question. I think adjusting to the diet was a bit challenging. It's not,
00:22:25.740 it's not a comfortable place to be, obviously. Like I slept pretty, pretty well. But in terms of
00:22:30.760 where you spend your time in your cell during the hours you're awake and not lying down, it's not
00:22:36.640 really a comfortable place to just sit. And, and so it's difficult to be there and, and, and try and be
00:22:45.480 productive, not feel like you can be productive, not be productive. And so that's a bit of a difficulty
00:22:53.100 for sure. One of the, the blessings was receiving lots of mail and mail would come and I could read
00:22:58.680 that and that would feel productive and it would encourage me and strengthen me. But I think just
00:23:05.540 the lack of productivity and, and, and, and the diet being what it was and trying to make up,
00:23:13.280 it took me a little while to figure out how to use the canteen effectively for me to be able to get
00:23:19.620 the calories I need without, without eating food that's not doing me well. So the diet, the, the time
00:23:28.000 in the cell being uncomfortable from a seated perspective. And, and there were moments when
00:23:35.880 the tension in the prison, you could feel it, something would be going on and you'd feel just a bit
00:23:40.760 of a tension among the, um, the, the inmates and that didn't last a long time or wasn't sort of
00:23:48.320 consistent, but some of those moments were a little bit awkward. You'd feel the tension in the room and,
00:23:54.100 and, um, I tried not to share that with my wife so as not to make her worry, but, uh, but for the most
00:24:01.020 part and actually in large part, almost entirely, actually the, the inmates were great to me and I
00:24:07.180 really appreciate them. Did you get a chance to minister to anyone on the inside? Because I think
00:24:12.880 your incarceration was part of your ministry on the outside. Your church just blossomed even though
00:24:19.800 you weren't here. Um, or at least that was my viewpoint spending every Sunday here while you
00:24:25.440 were gone. Um, but did you get a chance to minister to somebody on the inside? Yeah. I mean, so once I got
00:24:31.160 into GP, which is general public, I would have guys often come to my door and want to speak with me
00:24:37.720 and would share difficulties in their life with me and I would share the gospel with them. I mean,
00:24:44.420 we'd be talking through a door to each other. Um, but I would share the gospel with them. So that
00:24:49.940 happened often where guys would just come to me. There was a gentleman next door to me and he wanted 0.51
00:24:55.540 me to do a Bible study. So I went down to the floor. I was on tier three. And so we went to the floor
00:25:00.600 where there's tables and sat down, he and I, within about 60 seconds, three or four of the guys sat
00:25:05.820 down with us and, and, and there we are in the gospel of John having a Bible study. And, um, yeah,
00:25:12.840 I had lots of opportunities to share the gospel. I didn't get a lot of opportunities with the guards
00:25:17.500 because you're, you're at a bit of a distance away from the guards, but, but in terms of being able to
00:25:23.500 speak to the guys in, in the remand, uh, lots of opportunities. And just to kind of show
00:25:29.980 um, the affection that we had for each other in the moment that I was leaving, I turned around,
00:25:37.660 uh, I was at the exit entrance to the whole pod. I turned around and I lifted up my hand to wave
00:25:43.600 and, uh, and the doors of the, the, the pod began to shake as the men in their, in their cells just
00:25:51.800 banged on their doors as a sign of, um, support, uh, love affection. And I was with the chaplain
00:25:59.620 actually when that happened and he's emailed me since then and just shared with me that he'll
00:26:04.040 never forget that moment. And it was precious to me as well. And so, um, that just gives you a
00:26:10.600 little bit of a picture of the way that they thought toward me and treated me.
00:26:16.680 Were you aware of just how big your story was while you were inside? I mean, Aaron was on
00:26:22.400 Tucker Carlson. Were you aware of just the international interest in your story?
00:26:28.080 I was, but, but trying to get your mind around that on the inside is difficult. So I, I certainly
00:26:35.660 was aware, but even to this point now, I don't think I totally appreciate it. I don't think I'm,
00:26:43.100 um, I'm grasping the significance and just how, how big this has gotten. And, uh, and so that's part
00:26:52.300 of the adjustment, I think, is trying to figure out what am I stepping back into here? What, what's
00:26:56.620 this, what's life going to look like now that this has happened? Will life ever be the same?
00:27:01.480 Um, and so I'm just kind of taking it one day at a time on that.
00:27:06.120 Now the police were here today. They wanted to come into the church.
00:27:13.180 My question, I guess, is given that you've already been to jail for seven weeks and the police were here
00:27:19.580 today. Would you do all of this all over again? Well, the answer is absolutely. Um, I couldn't do
00:27:28.580 any different than I did. I was put in a position that demanded a certain response for me to be
00:27:36.400 obedient to Christ. And, um, yeah, absolutely. I would do the exact same thing again in a heartbeat.
00:27:43.340 I couldn't do any differently than I did. I've, I've honored my word and my integrity and my
00:27:49.920 conscience. And more importantly, my Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, the entire time.
00:27:54.580 Now I've heard some of the critics of Grace Life and probably yourself too, say that this is,
00:28:01.920 you know, sort of a stunt for fame or glory or money. How would you address that criticism?
00:28:08.180 So I understand that. I think, I think in our world, we are so used to people doing things for
00:28:20.400 vain glory. We are not used to seeing men, women of conviction that will take a principled stand 0.89
00:28:28.160 based on real conviction, tethered to reality as it is, because Jesus Christ is the King of Kings
00:28:35.820 and Lord of Lords. And, uh, and so I, I get it. They don't know me. And so looking from afar,
00:28:44.060 I can totally get it. I can totally understand it being suspicious, just being, just thinking
00:28:51.440 something, uh, that this is suspect on my end. I get that, but, and I don't even know if I really
00:28:56.420 care, to be honest with you. Um, this is not about what other people think. This is about the Lord
00:29:02.560 Jesus Christ. And so I am here to please Him, honor Him, glorify Him. Where the chips fall thereafter
00:29:09.780 is out of my hands. And, uh, and so I get it. I understand it, but they just don't know me and,
00:29:17.760 um, don't know my heart and, and just can't understand what I'm doing because they've never
00:29:23.680 seen anything like this before.
00:29:25.140 Now, I know every week that I've been here, your congregation prays for the people who have
00:29:32.600 participated in your incarceration. They pray for the RCMP officers. They pray for Alberta Health
00:29:37.800 Services. Do you have a message for the people who are involved in your incarceration?
00:29:44.080 You know, I, I'm wrestling with what that message is at this point in time. Um, to have the RCMP
00:29:55.420 here today and wanting to come into the facility was, uh, was difficult for me. Um, it is disruptive.
00:30:06.060 It affects my ability to carry out my responsibility to the Lord. You know, in some ways, being in jail
00:30:18.520 wasn't much of a difference because I haven't been free for months. With AHS and the RCMP breathing
00:30:26.980 down my neck for, for months, going into jail was actually reprieved from that. And so
00:30:35.680 um, I'm thankful to be out of jail, but to be here today and to see them still wanting to enforce
00:30:44.280 when this is in the court system, there's clearly a dispute. The dispute needs to play out.
00:30:52.140 Let's let the dispute play out. Um, so I don't know what my message is. Obviously, I would want them
00:30:59.740 to come to know Christ. I would want them to turn from their sin and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and
00:31:04.320 be saved. I, I have a heart that is full of forgiveness to anyone who's wronged me. And so I,
00:31:10.920 I harbor no unforgiveness toward anyone. And so I guess that would be it at the end of the day is I
00:31:18.740 would just love for them to be reconciled to God through his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:31:24.600 Now pastor, you've been very generous with your time. And I know this is your first interview since
00:31:28.360 you got out of jail. I want to ask you what your message would be to other pastors like yourself,
00:31:35.220 their churches aren't open or they're complying with the Alberta health services code. And for that,
00:31:42.400 they're turning away members of their congregation. Do you have a message for them?
00:31:45.380 Well, that's difficult too, because, um, just because a building has the title church on it
00:31:53.240 doesn't mean it's a true church. And to the extent that churches that aren't churches are closed,
00:32:00.560 um, I can take some joy in that. I don't want false churches to be open. 0.73
00:32:06.940 And so it's difficult. I mean, I would need to speak with each individual pastor, understand their
00:32:11.240 context, their situation, what they're going through in particular. It's the men that I'm in
00:32:17.120 fellowship with, the men that I know are preachers of the gospel who are approaching the pandemic
00:32:21.900 differently. I don't know that I have a message for them, but I would love to interact with them
00:32:25.860 and see if I can't help them to see things a little bit differently in terms of what we're going
00:32:30.200 through and where we're at and what, what the, the, the right response ought to be. But I recognize
00:32:35.560 that we're going to see things differently at times and that's okay. And, uh, it's not a matter
00:32:39.760 to, to, to break fellowship over with those men. I love them and, um, and, and support them.
00:32:46.600 So it's difficult. I don't think there's a one size fits all message in this situation.
00:32:51.280 Um, and so hopefully that gives some sense of what my mind and heart would be toward that.
00:32:58.400 Lastly, do you have a message for people around the world who supported you, supported Grace Life,
00:33:05.560 supported your family during this time?
00:33:07.500 Um, just immensely grateful, received so many letters, um, emails, the support that's poured
00:33:14.860 in is just, uh, overwhelming. And so I'm just, I'm thankful for the prayers, the well wishes,
00:33:21.160 everything that has come to us in this time. Um, I want to be, uh, faithful to the Lord and to the
00:33:28.160 extent that that blesses others. I take a immense joy in that. I really live for, for two reasons,
00:33:34.920 one to see people saved and two, to see them sanctified. And so to hear that the Lord has
00:33:40.620 been using what's happening in my life to strengthen them and cause their spiritual growth
00:33:45.160 and development is just, um, makes everything worth it in terms of the sacrifice. It's been to me
00:33:51.280 personally and my wife and our church. And so, uh, I just, uh, a huge hearty thank you, express my love
00:33:58.700 and gratitude to you and, and, and pray for me that I'll continue to be faithful and, and give you an
00:34:05.180 example worthy of imitation. Thank you, Pastor Coates. Thank you. Well, great work by Sheila.
00:34:11.200 She's really earned the trust of a lot of people who, you know, I should tell you that no other media
00:34:15.820 were allowed on the property because they didn't come to report. They came to stab and defame and
00:34:21.440 besmirch. Sheila earned the trust as she has with so many small businesses around Alberta. And we're doing
00:34:26.980 more and more fight the fines work, as you know, to learn about the cases we're defending, go to
00:34:31.620 fightthefines.com. That's our show for, for today. Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at
00:34:37.380 Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, goodbye. Keep fighting for freedom.