The Candice Malcolm Show - April 27, 2022


How has the Charter of Rights and Freedoms changed Canada？ (Ft. The Hon. Brian Peckford)


Episode Stats

Length

50 minutes

Words per Minute

170.7356

Word Count

8,567

Sentence Count

449

Misogynist Sentences

1

Hate Speech Sentences

2


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is 40 years old this year. How has this document
00:00:05.600 changed our country? How has it changed Canada? Well, joining me today is one of the original
00:00:10.320 signers of the Charter, the Honourable Brian Peckford. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is
00:00:14.820 the Candice Malcolm Show. Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into the program. So as we've
00:00:31.220 been talking about all over the news, everybody celebrating the Charter, looking back at the past
00:00:35.480 40 years, looking back at the history of the signing of the Charter, we thought, what better
00:00:39.420 way to talk about that momentous occasion in Canadian history than inviting the only living
00:00:45.200 signer of that document to join the podcast to walk us through what happened, tell us the story,
00:00:50.960 and help us understand why this document was so needed. So joining me today is the Honourable
00:00:56.560 Brian Peckford. Mr. Peckford served as the Progressive Conservative Premier of Newfoundland,
00:01:01.920 Labrador from 1979 to 1989. He's the last living signatory of the Charter. Also as Premier,
00:01:08.180 his government established the Atlantic Accord, which brought offshore oil and gas revenues to
00:01:13.020 the province that ultimately shifted the province's fortunes, economic fortunes, from being a perpetual
00:01:18.060 have-not province, which takes money from the federal government, to it shifted that, transformed
00:01:23.520 it into a strong performing province that is a have-province, which means that they contribute
00:01:28.220 more than they take out. Mr. Peckford is the author of the book, Someday the Sun Will Shine
00:01:33.600 and Have Not Will Become No More, beautifully titled memoir about his time as Premier and the
00:01:39.600 triumph to have control over the province's natural resources. Brian currently serves as the chair of
00:01:45.600 both the Board of Directors and the Advisory Board of Taking Back Your Freedoms, an organization formed
00:01:50.460 last year to equip and mobilize citizens towards taking back their constitutional and God-given
00:01:56.400 freedoms. Over the past year, Mr. Peckford has become a symbol of Canada's opposition to government
00:02:01.900 overreach in response to COVID-19. Mr. Peckford is a very popular speaker. He has spoken to thousands
00:02:07.720 of people at freedom rallies in his home province, his now home province, of British Columbia and was
00:02:13.060 a supporter of the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa. Peckford is also suing the federal government
00:02:18.540 and hopefully we will talk to him a little bit about this. This is over the federal government's
00:02:23.040 vaccine mandate with regards to air travel and he's working with our friends over at the Justice
00:02:27.740 Centre for Constitutional Freedoms on that. So all that is to just say, Brian, it's a tremendous
00:02:32.800 honour to have you on the program and thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me too.
00:02:37.900 I think it's important for us all to speak up whenever we can as it relates to the freedoms that
00:02:44.520 the Canadians are supposed to enjoy. Well, that's the theme of the show. So many of the sort of
00:02:51.560 stories that I've seen talking about the Charter and looking back at its 40-year history and what
00:02:56.660 happened 40 years ago. Unfortunately, they don't take a critical enough look at the ways that our
00:03:02.380 freedoms have been in some ways, many ways eroded and neglected over the past few years. So hopefully
00:03:07.860 we can get into that conversation today. First off the bat though, I just want to ask you, so take us
00:03:13.100 back 40 years ago to the signing of the Constitution. What was the process? I know it was a long, I think,
00:03:19.340 17-month ordeal negotiating many, many things, not just the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. So
00:03:24.060 take us back 40 years. Why did Canada need a Charter of Rights and Freedoms and why did this
00:03:29.080 constitutional negotiation begin and get underway? Yes, well, thank you very much. Yeah.
00:03:36.260 Canada was formed as a country in 1867 with the BNA Act, the British North America Act, which defined
00:03:42.400 Canada and the nature of our government. In other words, that it would be a federal government, not a
00:03:47.640 unitary government. That means that powers would be shared between the federal government and the
00:03:52.380 provinces. There were only four provinces at the time that formed Canada, Upper and Lower Canada,
00:03:58.260 New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. So Canada started with four provinces, not 10 provinces that it has
00:04:03.660 today. And we grew into 10 provinces over time. Missing from that document which formed Canada was
00:04:10.780 anything to do with individual rights and freedoms. They were not described in the BNA Act, which created
00:04:17.060 Canada. We relied upon, because we came out of the British system, the British common law, the unwritten
00:04:24.600 British common law. And so from the 1867 until really 1960, that's how Canadians defended their
00:04:32.780 individual rights and freedoms. There was nothing written in the constitution. If you look to the south
00:04:38.180 of us in the United States of America, their country was formed in 1776 and they had a written Charter of
00:04:44.900 Rights and Freedom, but Bill of Rights in 1791, only 15 years after they became a country. In our case,
00:04:54.680 we formed a country in 1867 and didn't get a written Charter until 1982, actually formalized in 1982.
00:05:03.260 So there was through the early part of the 20th century after we became a country,
00:05:09.360 various moves underfoot to indicate that why don't we have a written Charter of Rights and
00:05:14.860 freedoms like the Americans? Why do we depend upon unwritten British common law and the precedents
00:05:22.660 that have been set over the years in the courts? And that debate, you know, rose and fall over time.
00:05:30.640 But up into the 1960s, it became more pronounced in saying that something should be written as related
00:05:38.280 to our individual rights and freedoms. And that's when John Diefenbaker, who was the prime minister
00:05:42.940 in 1960, introduced what we know as the Bill of Rights. But there was two failings with that Bill
00:05:50.500 of Rights. One was that it was just a federal act and therefore only applied to federal jurisdiction
00:05:55.420 and not to provincial jurisdiction. So therefore, it never covered all Canadians, it only covered some
00:06:01.180 Canadians. And after that 1960 Bill of Rights, there was a movement underfoot stronger than ever
00:06:08.800 to try to put something in writing in a constitution, not just a federal act or a provincial act. So it
00:06:16.000 would cover everybody in the country and put it in writing and have something firm, identifiable,
00:06:24.360 and easily to reference. And so through the six from the 60s on, there were the various talks,
00:06:31.800 but it always got stymied and delayed and canceled by a debate over an amending formula. In other words,
00:06:43.700 if we amended the constitution and brought in a charter rights and freedoms and became totally independent
00:06:50.020 and not having to go back to England for any more amendments, how would we amend our own constitution
00:06:55.840 into the future? And there was great debate over that and nothing could be decided. But by 1980,
00:07:02.320 there was a strong, strong movement from the 1960s to do that. And so in 1980, the first ministers of
00:07:12.060 Canada, all the premiers and the prime minister agreed to get together to see whether we could do two
00:07:17.900 things really, patriate the constitution and also add a charter of rights and freedoms once we
00:07:26.100 patriated it, as well as a number of other items. And so we began to negotiate in 1980. And that
00:07:36.220 culminated in 1981 with an agreement called the Patriation Agreement, which became the Constitution Act of
00:07:43.920 1982. That was a long, tortuous negotiation of 17 months because it was interrupted by the prime
00:07:52.140 minister of Canada at the time, who was Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who found
00:07:58.460 that he discovered or he thought that provinces were being too difficult. And so he left the table
00:08:05.020 and tried to patriate the constitution and bring in a charter of rights and freedoms and other changes
00:08:10.740 on his own. And so he passed the law in the House of Commons to do just that and passed by the Senate
00:08:18.060 and became a law of Canada that the government of Canada would go ahead unilaterally, bring the
00:08:24.000 constitution home from England for good and attach a charter of rights and freedoms to it, as well as
00:08:30.460 other changes. Well, the provinces objected to this because we're a federal state and not a
00:08:36.860 unitarian state. And so eight provinces opposed what he was doing. Two provinces stayed with the
00:08:42.700 federal government. And so we took him to court over this action. And we won that action in the
00:08:49.240 Supreme Court of Canada in September 1981. And the Supreme Court said that the prime minister of Canada
00:08:55.060 and the government of Canada could not unilaterally patriate the constitution and attach a charter of
00:09:01.140 rights to it on their own. They couldn't do it unilaterally. They could only do it through the
00:09:06.080 provinces and with the provinces. And so the prime minister lost and he was forced then to come back
00:09:13.420 to the table that he had left. If in fact, we were going to get a charter of rights and freedoms,
00:09:18.640 if we're going to get patriation, if we're going to get other things. And we succeeded after three days
00:09:26.340 of final negotiations on November 3rd, 4th and 5th, as a result of a proposal that I, on behalf of
00:09:33.040 Newfoundland put forward to the rest of the provinces, it was this proposal that was accepted
00:09:37.580 on November the 5th by all the first ministers except Quebec. And the Supreme Court of Canada
00:09:44.420 decision did not say that you had to have unanimity in order to get a change. It said you had to have
00:09:50.560 a lot of the provinces on side. And of course, we had nine out of 10. And so therefore, that met the
00:09:56.600 constitutional test of the Supreme Court of Canada. And therefore, we got the Patriation Agreement
00:10:02.700 of 1981, which contained, among other things, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which became the
00:10:09.180 Constitution Act of 1982, which means that this year is the 40th anniversary of the charter and the other
00:10:16.840 changes becoming law. What is not understood by most Canadians is because now under the pandemic
00:10:23.260 situation which has occurred and the violations of the charter is that people forget that the
00:10:30.460 Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into being as a result of a package, not just the Charter of Rights
00:10:36.220 was negotiated. It was the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, patriation, bringing the Constitution home,
00:10:42.540 indigenous rights, native First Nations rights in Section 35, and the mending formula, regional economic
00:10:50.540 expansion and equalization and minority language rights. So when people say to me, why didn't you
00:10:58.620 put this in the Charter or put that in the Charter or take that out? They don't seem to understand we
00:11:02.940 just weren't negotiating the Charter. The Charter was part of a bargaining chip with other things that I
00:11:09.900 just outlined in it. But we did get freedoms for individuals and we did get rights for individuals
00:11:17.340 in sections 2, 6, 7 and 15 of the Charter, which now are being highlighted because the governments of
00:11:24.940 this nation through the pandemic measures have seen fit to violate those sacred rights that were in
00:11:31.900 that Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Okay, well thank you so much for that background and that history.
00:11:37.020 It's really helpful to sort of put it all together. I have an interesting anecdote because I went to study
00:11:41.260 in Australia and one of the first things that we were told during this sort of orientation was,
00:11:45.820 you know, unlike in the US, unlike in Canada, we don't have a Bill of Rights. So you don't have the
00:11:51.980 same, you know, amendments to the Constitution that you have in the United States. You don't have the
00:11:55.660 same Charter of Rights and Freedoms as you do in Canada and that might mean that you could, you know,
00:12:00.860 get yourself into trouble. That was sort of the context of the discussion we were having. But I
00:12:04.940 remember talking to a friend of mine who's in law school and her perspective was that you don't need
00:12:09.900 to have your rights codified. That in fact, when you codify your rights and have them listed,
00:12:16.300 not only does it list what your rights are, but it limits what's not there. And so I'm wondering if
00:12:21.260 you can sort of comment on whether you think Canada is better off having a codified list of what our
00:12:28.060 rights are, like a piece of paper that you can uphold and you can take to court and you can use to
00:12:32.220 justify. Or whether the ancient sort of, you know, common law tradition that Australia still uses,
00:12:37.740 that the British use is a better approach. What do you think?
00:12:41.580 I think Australia has, since your time, now have some Bill of Rights in their Constitution.
00:12:50.220 I just noted that the other day, a decision out of Australia referred to it. And by the way,
00:12:57.260 the wording is very much similar to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But to come to your main
00:13:01.660 point of British common law and why a codified charter is better than a uncodified list of rights,
00:13:10.700 that's the problem you have with unwritten rights and freedoms is that they are unwritten and therefore
00:13:19.260 the interpretation can vary over time with various precedents set by various judges. If you have
00:13:25.820 something which is in writing and it is a sentence, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, if you
00:13:32.700 want, or freedom of religion or freedom of conscience, that's it. And it's quite clear. If in fact you rely
00:13:40.620 upon uncodified rights and freedoms, then you're subject to the whims of a judiciary over centuries,
00:13:51.260 where one judge or one lawyer could bring up, well, in this case, it said yes. In this other case,
00:13:56.780 I'm not too sure who said yes. And so therefore, this can evolve over time and change over time. When
00:14:05.580 many people believe that we need to have fixed charter rights or Bill of Rights or fixed freedom rights in a
00:14:16.780 constitution so that it's not up to the whims of anybody, whether it be parliament or judges to
00:14:23.820 change according to their own biases at the time in their own history at the time. That's one of the
00:14:30.940 problems you have. It is a riskier proposition to maintain a given right, given that it can change over
00:14:37.500 time with various individuals, various judges. So I think that's one of the most important factors
00:14:45.100 which most of us at the time in 1980, 81 and 82 considered that it was necessary to have
00:14:53.420 something that individual citizens could look to as saying, we do have something that we can refer
00:15:00.220 to immediately and understand. It's not just for the lawyers and for the judges. It's for individual
00:15:05.900 citizens to understand that they have certain constitutional rights guaranteed in law,
00:15:12.060 in the constitution, written down, and is not subject to the whims of history or individuals over time.
00:15:21.100 Interesting. That's a great point. I had Mr. John Carpe on the program a couple of days ago talking about
00:15:27.180 the charter. He runs the Justice Center, which I know you've done some work with. And one of the sort of
00:15:31.980 limits he said when he was talking about the charter, why it doesn't always uphold our rights and freedoms the
00:15:37.500 way that we want, is he talked about section one of the charter, which says that the charter rights
00:15:42.940 can be limited by law so long as those limits can be shown to be reasonable in a free and democratic
00:15:47.980 society. So that verbiage, that line at the beginning, sort of pretexts the constitution saying,
00:15:54.780 if a government can prove it is reasonable in a free and democratic society, that's justification,
00:15:59.900 and that can convince a court and a judge. Go ahead, if you want to respond to that.
00:16:05.900 Well, I think you left out the most important part of section one. And that is, I'm an old English
00:16:12.700 teacher. And if you read the section one, and they read it out, the verb in that sentence is
00:16:17.820 demonstrably justified within reasonable limits by law in a free and democratic society. And a lot of
00:16:25.260 lawyers, since this came into being, have tried to twist that meaning and always just talk about
00:16:32.540 reasonable limits. In that sentence, there is demonstrably justified. Now, I make two arguments
00:16:40.380 as it relates to section one. Unfortunately, I'm the old first minister still alive who was there when
00:16:45.740 this was written. The intent of section one was to apply if the state was in peril, war, insurrection,
00:16:54.620 or some other extreme event, or some other extreme event which threatened the existence of the state.
00:17:00.540 That does not exist today, does not exist during the pandemic circumstance of the last two years.
00:17:06.780 And therefore, section one, in my view, does not even apply in this circumstance. And intent is very
00:17:14.060 important in jurisprudence. The courts very often look behind the piece of legislation or the piece of
00:17:22.780 law from the Constitution. And look behind it to say, what was the intent of the founders? What was
00:17:28.060 the intent of the creators of that section? Well, I can tell the judge, and I can tell the lawyers,
00:17:34.540 and I can tell Canada that as one of the people who was there, that was the intent of section one. It was
00:17:40.620 to be used only. That's why we wanted it in the Constitution. The Constitution is more permanent
00:17:47.340 than a piece of federal legislation or a piece of provincial legislation. It was put there to be
00:17:53.340 permanent and only to be changed in the most extreme circumstances. We're not into that extreme
00:17:59.020 circumstance. However, I go on to argue in order to give, what shall I say, courtesy more than anything
00:18:08.060 else. And to be fair, I say to people, okay, for argument's sake, let's say that section one does
00:18:15.580 apply in this pandemic circumstance. And therefore, the governments could go ahead and use section one.
00:18:21.660 There are four tests in section one, even if it does apply. And the most important test, contrary to
00:18:28.700 what a lot of the lawyers and others have been saying over the last two years, is the test of
00:18:33.820 demonstrably justify. That's the verb in that sentence. That's the predominant operative phrase
00:18:39.980 in that larger sentence, demonstrably justify within reasonable limits by law in a free and democratic
00:18:46.220 society. Well, no government, 14 governments of Canada, 10 provinces, federal government, or the
00:18:52.380 three territories have demonstrably justified what they are doing under their mandates. They have not
00:18:59.660 met the test of demonstrably justify. Everybody in Canada who knows anything about public policy
00:19:05.980 knows that when you use the words demonstrably justify, and I remember when we put demonstrably
00:19:12.060 in there to make it stronger, not just justify. Most public policymakers know that means cost-benefit
00:19:18.940 analysis or some other approach. How do you demonstrably justify what you're doing? You are government,
00:19:25.340 that is. Well, you try to find out whether what you're doing has more benefits than costs. And as we now
00:19:33.420 know and have known for a long time, only about 90 or 100 days into this pandemic, that the cure was
00:19:40.780 worse than the disease, that all these pandemic measures that were brought in where people died
00:19:46.940 because they never got to see a doctor, delayed surgeries, suicide, you know, many families broken
00:19:54.060 up and the like. Dr. Douglas Allen of Simon Fraser University did a study in which he reviewed 80 other
00:20:01.180 studies from around the world as to whether there was the cost, whether the benefit was greater than
00:20:08.220 the cost on these measures. And he found out of 80 studies that no, it wasn't justified what they
00:20:15.420 were doing. And this was published in April 2021, that study out of our own university in Canada,
00:20:22.220 by Douglas, Douglas Allen. You're very seldom here telling the report. I wonder why. It's because
00:20:27.740 his definitive, nobody's ever questioned the validity of the report. Nobody's ever questioned
00:20:34.140 his methodology. The report is there out public for anybody to read. And that's what it concluded. And
00:20:40.460 he also said in that document that 90 to 100 days after the pandemic was declared in like March 2020,
00:20:51.180 it was clear to policymakers and others that we have real problems here by implementing these mandates.
00:20:57.900 It's very, very negative. And so the test of Section 1 has not been met, even if Section 1 does apply.
00:21:06.380 And if you want to take it further, another test there was free and democratic society.
00:21:10.780 Well, a free and democratic society means that therefore parliamentary democracy. That's what Canada
00:21:16.700 means when you say free and democratic society. We have parliaments all over Canada. We have 14 of
00:21:22.060 them. And therefore, the parliaments should have been called and kept open, not called just to give
00:21:28.540 the government more power, but call and stayed open and a parliamentary committee of that parliament
00:21:34.220 established to review what the government was doing to see whether in fact it was beneficial. And then
00:21:40.700 they would have called in other people to the committee, other than just a government scientist,
00:21:45.900 to get a broader view of this situation to see whether in fact it was a valid thing to do at
00:21:52.220 that time. They didn't do that. So my argument is that number one, Section 1 does not apply because
00:21:58.460 it doesn't meet the intent. And I was there and I know what the intent was. And that's why it was put
00:22:04.140 in the Constitution. And by the way, if you go down to Section 4 in the Charter, which talks about
00:22:10.700 extending the life of a parliament if we're, if we have to. Under what conditions could you extend
00:22:17.020 the parliament? War, insurrection, if the state was in peril. So that was what was on our minds.
00:22:23.260 It was clear in Section 4 what was on our minds. It was a very extreme event for Section 1 to be
00:22:29.580 triggered. And that extreme event does not exist today. But I go on to say, as I said in summary,
00:22:35.500 that even if Section 1 does apply, the governments of this nation did not meet the two very important
00:22:41.420 tests of the four, one demonstrably justified or within the context of a free and democratic society.
00:22:49.020 Well, thank you for making that important clarification. I must have just been misreading
00:22:53.580 the Section 1 there. But I think I think you really robustly answered that question. But it does beg
00:22:59.980 the next question, which is, why the why? You know, if the Section 1 test wasn't met,
00:23:07.100 how is it that the governments were able to steamroll so many of the other rights that were
00:23:12.460 written down in the Charter? How did this play? How did it play out? Why did it play out? How was it
00:23:17.100 able to be the case in Canada? You know, as well as I do, they just went ahead and did it. And nobody
00:23:23.100 and well, what really happened, I guess, is that early on, the Imperial College of London
00:23:30.540 in England issued a report, which the White House in the United States, with the Parliament in Canada
00:23:38.060 and all the world brought into this fear mongering that the Imperial College of London said, where
00:23:44.700 millions were going to die, some die in the streets. They even talked about deaths in the streets of
00:23:50.300 China at the time in Wuhan because of this virus and so on. So a climate affair was created very early
00:23:59.020 on into this pandemic, which just about everybody bought into, except myself and a few others. But
00:24:07.740 a lot of people bought into this. And this gave the government's license, they thought, to go ahead
00:24:15.340 and violate the freedoms and rights enshrined in the Constitution of Canada. And unfortunately,
00:24:22.700 so that's what happened really, is that a mass psychosis overtook the society, and people were
00:24:30.140 very subservient once fear set in to going along with the government narrative. So it goes to show,
00:24:38.140 as we know from history, that very often leaders have reached their own limits, the normal limits that
00:24:49.100 apply to a government or apply to a leader. And this is what happened in this sense. And I've been
00:24:54.300 fighting ever since to get this back to get it. Now, we must say that the fight is not over. And this is
00:25:02.220 the other thing that people say, well, the Charter has been thrown out the window, and that's the end
00:25:06.860 of it. Well, if that was so, then the courts of appeal of the provinces have not heard yet,
00:25:13.260 nor has the Supreme Court of Canada. It's the lower courts that have heard the cases so far
00:25:18.060 and have ruled against us and ruled for the governments. But the other point I must make is
00:25:24.060 that the first words of the Constitution of the Charter are not Section 1, are not in Section 1.
00:25:30.620 The first words of the Charter, which therefore comes before Section 1,
00:25:35.740 and under which Section 1 is to be considered, are, this country was founded on the principles
00:25:42.380 of the supremacy of God and the rule of law. Now, if you put Section 1 into that context,
00:25:49.660 what does the supremacy of God mean? Doesn't that mean inalienable rights, that the rights that we
00:25:55.100 possess as individuals don't even come from this faith in the first instance, they come from the Creator.
00:26:00.300 And it's in that context that you must consider this Charter. Then what has happened in the lower
00:26:07.340 courts, they've even ignored even mentioning the supreme supremacy of God and the rule of law in one
00:26:13.580 case in so far. And so, and I'm sure you have not heard in a lot of the debates and a lot of the
00:26:20.540 articles that you've read very much attention to supremacy of God and the rule of law. But it is the
00:26:26.300 beginning of the Charter and comes even before Section 1. And once again, as a former English
00:26:32.460 teacher, at the end of that sentence, it's not a period, it's a colon. A colon has a meaning,
00:26:39.500 a semicolon has a meaning, a period has a meaning, a comma has a meaning, and they're all different.
00:26:44.540 Well, colon means what follows, right? What comes after, right? That's what a colon means. I am going to list
00:26:52.060 the number of animals there is in the world, colon. I am going to tell you who are the
00:26:58.780 National Hockey League players in Canada, colon, right? What follows, what comes after. Well,
00:27:04.620 that's what this was delivered by us when we wrote that sentence, is that all the other things that
00:27:12.220 come after that sentence have to be considered in the light of supremacy of God in the context of
00:27:19.340 rule of law. This has been missing so far. And so it's my intention, and many others with me,
00:27:26.620 to point this out. So that by the time the appeals get to the courts of appeal of the provinces,
00:27:33.340 quite likely three or four provinces for sure. And then ultimately to the Supreme Court of Canada,
00:27:39.900 that the justices will recognize that what their fellow comrades did in the lower courts was not
00:27:46.940 complete. They did not consider seriously enough section one, nor did they consider seriously enough
00:27:54.620 the preamble to the charter supremacy of God and the rule of law. So the hockey game isn't over.
00:28:01.020 We're in the latter part of the second period. We've got the full third period to go,
00:28:05.340 and that is the courts of appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada. So I'm not giving up the
00:28:09.900 on the courts yet. I know a lot of people have, but I still insist that if Canadians from coast to
00:28:17.100 coast to coast kept arguing with me that the higher courts now have a solemn responsibility
00:28:25.660 to correct what has happened in the lower courts. They've done it before. It's been done in Supreme
00:28:30.140 Courts all over the world. That's why you have a Supreme Court of Canada, because there may be a bit of
00:28:34.780 a mistake in the lower courts. Otherwise, why have it? If they're all omnipotent at the lower level,
00:28:39.660 well, then why have an appeal court? Why have a Supreme Court of Canada? The mere fact that we do
00:28:44.460 means that there's a possibility that the lower courts got it wrong. And in this case, they got it
00:28:50.540 very much wrong, both in interpreting section one and interpreting or ignoring the principles of the
00:28:57.420 supremacy of God and the rule of law. So I'm still in there fighting that the courts have an opportunity
00:29:04.300 now to correct what has been done wrong so far. Well, I really appreciate you adding in that
00:29:10.380 mention of the preamble because it's so important. And you're right. We don't hear very often the fact
00:29:14.300 that our country, our constitution and our charter is based on the principles of the supremacy of God
00:29:20.300 and the rule of law. I wish our prime minister would contemplate it. I mean, we have a prime minister,
00:29:24.540 uh, Brian, who routinely breaks the law. I mean, he's had multiple ethics violations. He acts
00:29:30.620 oftentimes like he's above the law. He doesn't seem like a person who really does respect the rule of
00:29:35.260 law. And all the other parties, sadly, that are in the House of Commons are in the same boat.
00:29:42.060 And by the way, he never only broke ethics rules. He broke the law. He broke the conflict of interest
00:29:52.940 law, which was a law that was passed by the House of Commons, by these very MPs. And he broke it five
00:30:00.460 times, according to the independent conflict of interest ethics commissioner.
00:30:05.740 Are you talking about the Aga Khan, the Aga Khan vacation? Is that what you're referring to?
00:30:11.820 I know there's just been a, okay. That's one. And you can go into the website of the ethics
00:30:18.860 commissioner and find all five of these. Another one was obstruction of justice. When the minister
00:30:25.660 attorney general, Judy Wilson-Raybo was trying to be forced to change her mind and get her department
00:30:33.420 to change their decision, that SNC-Lavalin company had to go to court. They were trying
00:30:39.660 to get a deal outside of court. Then the prime minister was trying to force his minister of
00:30:45.100 justice through his office and through a couple of his ministers and his staff to get the minister
00:30:50.860 who had already made up her mind that this should go to a full court hearing. There was the evidence
00:30:56.300 was quite overwhelming that they had committed wrong and that it should go all the way. The prime
00:31:01.980 minister tried to obstruct the normal course of justice by interfering with the attorney general
00:31:09.340 and the minister of justice. If anybody learns anything when they become a leader of a political
00:31:15.100 party, which has the majority of seats in the House of Commons or in the parliament, is this.
00:31:20.060 And my first day in office, I was advised by senior people in the government. One thing you must know
00:31:29.660 from the start, Mr. Premier, and I'm sure you've heard of this when you were a minister, that the
00:31:35.340 course of justice, course of justice that is being preceded in your ministry of justice is not to be
00:31:42.860 interfered with by your office or by you. It's one of the principles of British parliamentary democracy.
00:31:49.820 It is a very, very important part of this. You act untouchable. You don't interfere with what the
00:31:57.900 minister of justice department is bringing forward as various allegations or prosecutions against
00:32:05.900 a person, against the company or whatever. I learned it very early on, 24 hours in,
00:32:10.780 I was advised, you know, you'll be well served to leave that alone. That's one, that's sacrosanct.
00:32:17.020 And so the prime minister broke those laws. But my bigger point is this, and there's where we have a
00:32:22.380 problem in Canada today. We have no moral compass anymore. And a really good example is that none
00:32:28.700 of the MPs in any of the parties have tried to amend the conflict of interest legislation
00:32:35.260 so that if an MP breaks the law, they cannot serve in parliament. Right now, the prime minister is still
00:32:41.580 serving in parliament, even though he broke the law, because there is no penalties, like $100 fine,
00:32:48.140 $500 fine for breaking the law, you can still serve in the parliament of Canada. I wrote on my blog a
00:32:54.860 few days ago on this, and I have been talking about this for a while. So the problem we have in our
00:33:02.780 nation is the prime minister, but it's also all the other leaders of parties in the House of Commons
00:33:08.300 who have not insisted that this conflict of interest law, we don't need to change the constitution.
00:33:13.740 All we need is to go to the House of Commons like they do every day when it's open,
00:33:18.460 and make a proposal, or make a resolution, or propose a change to the conflict of interest act.
00:33:23.580 Any party, any MP can propose that. And none of the parties have done it. And so therefore,
00:33:29.260 they're all guilty by association, by not taking it upon themselves to insist that this,
00:33:36.860 our parliament and our parliamentarians must be honest. And right now they're not.
00:33:43.820 Well, it's so true. Sometimes you just shake your head reading the news and hearing about senators
00:33:47.660 and MPs being charged with crimes and breaking the laws. And it's like, what kind of country is this?
00:33:52.460 What kind of culture do we have where we don't have the basic respect for the rule of law? We allow
00:33:56.620 politicians to get away with this. I would likewise echo that. I would love to see laws put into place
00:34:02.300 to be stricter against the people who are elected to represent us. I wanted to pivot a little bit and
00:34:07.580 ask you about the Emergencies Act. Because when you were talking about the charter having the
00:34:12.060 demonstrably justifiable clause in Section 1, and the idea was that it was during like a war time
00:34:18.300 or an extreme event, it seemed very similar to the Emergencies Act. This thing used to be called
00:34:24.300 martial law. It used to be reserved for the War Measures Act at a time when our country was being
00:34:30.300 invaded or there was an insurrection. It seems to me that the prime minister just used it because he
00:34:34.060 didn't like the truckers and he didn't agree with them. I'm wondering if you can comment on what you
00:34:38.540 saw transpire during the trucker convoy and the government's heavy-handed use of force against
00:34:43.580 those protesters. Yes, I was there for a number of days during when the truckers convoy situation
00:34:52.620 was at its peak. And I walked the streets of Ottawa and I didn't see anything that the prime minister
00:34:58.860 and some of his associates saw. They were very civil. The streets were left passable and the trucks were
00:35:07.340 on the side. And they were negotiating every day with the city of Ottawa to ensure that this convoy
00:35:16.300 could continue and meanwhile people could get around. And very few Canadians know that, that the convoy was
00:35:24.380 in touch and negotiating almost every day with the city of Ottawa and the mayor and the police of
00:35:31.020 Ottawa. So what the prime minister and the government did with the support of the NDP and his own and the
00:35:39.180 Liberal MPs was bring in this extreme measure, which by the way, at the beginning of that piece of
00:35:46.060 legislation, it must be consistent and conform to the Charter Rights and Freedoms. Well, it did not because
00:35:51.980 they never demonstrated at all. And since then, the hearings that have been held have shown that there
00:35:58.300 were no outside forces. There's been no prosecution brought about anybody, about firearms or about
00:36:07.500 violence. The very things that the prime minister used to justify bringing in the Emergency Act has not
00:36:14.140 materialized when it's been looked at. So he did this without the evidence to show, to demonstrably
00:36:22.380 justify that he could override the rights and freedoms of the truckers. He did this without the evidence,
00:36:28.380 the firm evidence, to justify what he did. So that was unconstitutional as well, very unconstitutional,
00:36:35.020 because it violated the Charter. Now what's happened, to show you how much rot we have in our system,
00:36:40.780 and very few people talking about it. It was revealed this morning by Congress Signal, a news
00:36:47.660 organization, that the prime minister appointed yesterday a judge under the Act who's supposed to
00:36:54.940 review what happened in the Emergency, when introducing the Emergency Measures Act, whether it was necessary
00:37:00.460 and so on. But who did he appoint? A judge who was a donor to the Liberal Party.
00:37:06.540 So where is the independence? Where is the transparency? Where is the accountability? If
00:37:14.620 the prime minister would appoint a judge, surely there's judges around at the higher levels in the
00:37:21.660 provinces who are not contributors to any political party that he could appoint to show how independent
00:37:29.420 this inquiry is going to be. So this inquiry is tainted right from the start. So we have a government
00:37:35.900 and MPs who are violating the Charter with their mandates. Then we have a government in Ottawa which
00:37:43.100 is violating the Charter by bringing in the Emergency Measures Act. And now we have a prime minister who's
00:37:48.700 appointed a judge to review the bringing in of the Emergency Act, who's a Liberal donor to the Liberal
00:37:55.580 Party of which the Prime Minister is a leader. So that's conflict of interest all over the place.
00:38:00.940 So all the way, the Conservative Party of Canada, the NDP Party of Canada, the Green Party, all of the
00:38:06.700 parties that are now in the House of Commons should be crying blue murder over this. This is ridiculous
00:38:13.500 for a country that calls itself a democracy to have an inquiry about something that the government has done
00:38:20.300 headed up by a judge that is a party sympathizer. I know, I agree. And we saw that earlier when
00:38:27.580 one of the trucker convoy organizers, Tamara Lynch, was also denied bail from a judge who had also been
00:38:32.540 a Liberal donor. I just want to point out because I saw that story, the judge. So the prime minister
00:38:37.100 called a national inquiry into the Emergency Act. When I first saw that news, I thought that was a great
00:38:41.500 story. Okay, great. We're going to get to the bottom of this. We're going to figure out why it was
00:38:44.620 called what happened. And then I sort of read a little bit more. He didn't do it because he was
00:38:49.980 doing something. Oh, I should call inquiry to let people know whether, in fact, I did this right or
00:38:55.340 not. He had to do it because it's in the act. Right. Okay. Okay. There you go. But then I read the
00:39:00.620 subtext. First of all, the judge that was named was Paul Relew. Now, I spoke to a journalist that
00:39:04.860 refuted that point and said that it was a different Paul Relew. So I'm not sure that that has been verified
00:39:10.300 that he is a Liberal donor or not. But he was certainly a Liberal appointee who was
00:39:14.460 named the judge that's going to lead this independent public order emergency commission.
00:39:19.580 But I will just say that when you read the fine print of what the commission is supposed to be
00:39:24.380 examining, I mean, you can tell right off the bat, this thing is going to be incredibly biased.
00:39:28.220 They're looking and examining the evolution and goals of the protests, the organizers,
00:39:32.220 the participants, the role of foreign and domestic funding, including crowdsourcing,
00:39:37.180 the use of social media, and the impact of misinformation and disinformation, which are the popular
00:39:42.700 buzzwords around justifying censorship online, the economic and international impact of the blockades,
00:39:50.780 and then the use of force. Well, we know that the international blockades had already been removed
00:39:54.780 by the time the Emergencies Act was brought in. So the whole thing just seems like it's a cooked up
00:39:59.740 exercise in PR on behalf of the Trudeau government.
00:40:05.580 Yeah, listen, the counter-signal produced the documents. They just didn't allege that this
00:40:12.540 judge is a Liberal donor. They produced the documents that showed the amount of money that
00:40:17.340 this judge contributed every year from government documents, okay? Because they have to reveal
00:40:24.380 where their money comes from under law. And his name, that judge's name, appears all through
00:40:33.100 the late 1990s and into the year 2000, where he contributed so much each year to the Liberal
00:40:39.100 Party of Canada. These are not the counter-signals documents. These are the documents of the
00:40:44.700 government of Canada, right, of the law of Canada. And so I think it's pretty clear that this judge was
00:40:51.580 a Liberal donor. Number two, it's already been revealed through House of Commons committee meetings
00:40:57.820 that there was no outside interference. Fintech, one of the big organizations around the world
00:41:03.180 which examines the flow of money, has already testified that there was no outside money involved
00:41:08.460 here. That it was all ordinary citizens contributing to a legitimate act of civil disobedience,
00:41:15.340 which is allowed in this country. We're allowed to freely express. We're allowed to freely assemble.
00:41:21.180 And that's what these people were doing. And so to even put that in the terms of reference
00:41:26.060 shows a complete insult of what has already been testified by Fintech and other independent
00:41:32.940 observers. And so once again, like you say, this is a very tainted inquiry before it gets off. But make
00:41:39.580 no mistake about it. The Prime Minister didn't do anything to demonstrate that he wanted to get to the
00:41:44.460 bottom of this. He was forced to do it under law. That's why the inquiry is established,
00:41:49.980 because there's a provision in the act saying you must establish an inquiry. But the other part of
00:41:56.460 all of this is, who does it report to? Who does this inquiry report to? Where does the inquiry go?
00:42:02.380 Where does the results of the inquiry go? Back to the same MPs who supported the emergency act in the
00:42:07.820 beginning. So therefore, it goes nowhere. It goes nowhere. It's totally ineffectual,
00:42:12.940 because it's in a conflict of interest from day one.
00:42:16.940 Well, it's absolutely correct. I'll take a look at the countersignal report. I hadn't looked closely
00:42:22.380 at it. I will just say that I spoke to a journalist friend and a conservative MP before recording,
00:42:26.700 and they told me that it wasn't the same Paul Rouleau. But I will do some due diligence personally,
00:42:32.060 and get back to you and get back to the audience about that. But certainly, either way,
00:42:37.500 it doesn't seem like a very healthy exercise in getting to the bottom of something that really,
00:42:42.140 truly does deserve, Canadians deserve to know what really happened, and the abuses of government need
00:42:46.780 to be highlighted. Well, Brian, I really appreciate your time. I had one final question for you, and I
00:42:53.180 know we've gone over a little bit, but I do appreciate your time. And I want to just say,
00:42:57.260 you know, looking back at 40 years of the charter, do you think the charter has lived up to your
00:43:02.460 expectations back then from 1982? Are there any areas where you think the charter has fallen short,
00:43:07.660 anything that you wish you had done differently in drafting and putting together the charter?
00:43:11.580 Yeah. Man is a fallen being, if you believe in Christianity or some form of spirituality,
00:43:17.420 and none of us are perfect. I think the person who was alleged to be perfect was crucified.
00:43:23.420 So, you know, we don't have to take a chance here of doing something that's always perfect.
00:43:28.300 So obviously, it can always be improved upon any kind. But I would just remind people that this
00:43:33.660 charter, as I said earlier at the opening, was not negotiated in and of itself. It was a bargaining
00:43:39.260 ship with other things, Aboriginal rights, equalization, amending formula, and minority
00:43:47.500 language rights, and so on. They were all part of the mix, and we were negotiating back and forth.
00:43:52.860 So if you had to do just a charter over again, that's one thing. But anytime you open the constitution,
00:44:00.060 the parties to the constitution are going to want other changes, and just not the charter changes.
00:44:04.540 That's part of living in a democracy, right? And the participants are going to be
00:44:10.540 looking for various things, including Quebec will be looking for other things, because they're not
00:44:14.460 even part of the constitution right now. So one has to say, be careful what you wish for,
00:44:21.420 because you might lose the supremacy of God, and pick up something else on the other end,
00:44:26.220 whether that's a bargain or not. And so yeah, you can always do better. But I would just say that
00:44:31.980 having those sections 2, 6, 7, and 15 clearly identified, I mean, how can there be any dispute
00:44:39.900 over life, liberty, and the security of the person? Remember, constitutions are principles.
00:44:46.140 Legislation gets into real detail, but these are principles that then have to be interpreted
00:44:50.940 by the courts. To make them any more definitive, you'll lose something, or you'll gain something.
00:44:57.020 But remember, it's all compromise. You're not, you're not into this alone. There are other
00:45:03.500 players, and there are other factors at play. I would just do that. But of course, if you could
00:45:08.860 go back and do anything over again, you can usually make improvements. And we could no doubt in the
00:45:13.660 charter. But remember, you'll never get a situation where you're going to be negotiating the charter
00:45:18.300 by itself. It will always be, when you open the charter, you're opening the constitution. Remember,
00:45:23.660 the charter is in the Constitution Act 1982. It's not the Charter of Rights Constitution Act.
00:45:32.860 It's a charter, it's the Constitution Act of 1982, of which the charter is one of seven items.
00:45:42.220 I think it's 30, 60, 60 parts to the Constitution Act, 34 for the charter.
00:45:53.580 All the rest are of the other matters that I've mentioned. So yes, you can always do better. But in
00:45:59.020 the context of Constitution, not legislation, it is far, far more difficult to get exactly what you want
00:46:08.060 from all the players. We all compromise. This is a compromise document, as all of these things are.
00:46:14.700 Well, thank you for joining the show and providing so much more context and nuance to the circumstances
00:46:23.260 around the charter, the purpose, some of the more forgotten lines from the charter that we wish
00:46:27.980 were more emphasized. And thank you as well for your courage, your advocacy, your voice throughout the
00:46:34.460 last two years. I know you've been a tremendous beacon of hope for so many Canadians who feel discouraged
00:46:39.660 by the overreaches of our government and the state of things. So we really appreciate you being out
00:46:44.380 there, Brian, on the front lines fighting against government overreach and continuing to do the
00:46:49.500 important work of upholding and championing the rights and freedoms of all Canadians. So thank you for
00:46:54.540 that. Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. Have a great day.
00:47:00.300 All right. Thank you so much. That is Brian Peckford, the former Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador,
00:47:05.260 original signature to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is the
00:47:09.180 Candace Malcolm Show. Hey, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning into that interview. I thought it
00:47:15.580 was great. Great conversation with the former Premier of Newfoundland and original signatory to
00:47:19.740 the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I appreciate his time. I wanted to revisit one thing that happened
00:47:23.900 in the interview, though, because as you saw, we had a little bit of a dispute over the judge that is
00:47:28.620 presiding over the national inquiry into the Emergencies Act, the use of the Emergencies Act. Trudeau
00:47:33.980 appointed them. So Mr. Peckford made the point that Kian Bextie had reported in the counter signal
00:47:39.900 that this individual was a liberal donor. And now, right before I recorded the interview,
00:47:44.380 I had read a message from someone who was refuting that fact. I talked to a journalist and I spoke to
00:47:49.020 a conservative MP. So I just didn't want to put out information that wasn't accurate. I said that I
00:47:54.060 would do a little bit of due diligence and get back to the audience about it. So I'm doing that
00:47:58.780 right now. So what I am referring to is a report that was put out by Brian Lilly. Brian Lilly is a
00:48:04.940 journalist over at the Toronto Sun. And he put this on Twitter. He said, I had a nice chat with Paul
00:48:09.740 Rouleau from Port Colborne, Ontario. He is not a judge and has not been named head of the inquiry.
00:48:14.940 So the claim by many that the judge is a recent donor is false. Okay, then he links to his Toronto
00:48:20.060 Sun piece that he has profiling Paul Rouleau, who is the individual who Trudeau named. And let me just
00:48:25.500 read from that report. He says, it fits with Trudeau's style that he waited until the last
00:48:29.980 possible day to call the inquiry and then appointed a former top liberal political staffer to head the
00:48:35.420 inquiry. So Paul Rouleau was appointed to the bench by Paul Martin's Liberal government in 2002. He isn't
00:48:41.020 simply someone who made a few small donations to the Liberal Party or someone who went to some cocktail
00:48:45.500 fundraisers. He actually worked for the Liberal Party in the past. So this is more from Brian Lilly's
00:48:51.180 report. In 1983, he was part of John Turner's leadership campaign to dig over when Pierre
00:48:56.620 Trudeau announced his retirement. Rouleau then had a hand in helping pick Turner's cabinet. Once he won
00:49:01.820 leadership, various media reports described him as an executive assistant or an appointment secretary.
00:49:07.340 So we're not just talking about an independent judge here. We're talking about someone who can
00:49:11.820 fairly and accurately be described as a Liberal insider, a partisan Liberal, a Liberal staffer,
00:49:17.100 someone who is a big L Liberal, just like Justin Trudeau. Think about it. Justin Trudeau just
00:49:21.900 appointed a party loyalist to head up an inquiry into his use of the Emergencies Act. Either way,
00:49:28.060 it's unprecedented whether you take Kean Bexley's word that this guy is a donor or whether you look
00:49:33.020 to Brian Lilly saying, no, he's not a donor. It's not the same guy. However, even worse, this guy was a
00:49:37.420 political staffer for the Liberals. Either way, not good for our country, not good for the state of the
00:49:42.460 rule of law when the person who could be holding Justin Trudeau to account is part of Trudeau's
00:49:48.060 circle, part of the old boys club with the Liberal Party, not a good sign for Canada. Anyway, I wanted
00:49:53.180 to put that out there so that it was clear. I appreciate Mr. Peckford's time. Thank you so much
00:49:57.900 for tuning into the interview and for following True North.