The Critical Compass Podcast - “If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Be Done TO You＂ - John Carpay, JCCF

00:00:00.000 Well, thank you, Benita, for the introduction. Thank you, Jason, for inviting me to be with

00:00:10.520 you this afternoon. It's a great honor. And most of all, I want to thank each and every person here.

00:00:18.600 One of my favorite sayings is from Edmund Burke, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph

00:00:23.860 is for good people to do nothing. And you being here this morning, you are good people,

00:00:29.440 and you're not doing nothing, and so you're standing in the way of the triumph of evil.

00:00:34.620 So God bless you, and keep that up.

00:00:41.580 There's an old French proverb, it kind of lines up with the only thing necessary for

00:00:47.280 evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.

00:00:49.980 There's an old French proverb that says, if you don't do politics, then politics will

00:00:55.120 be done unto you. And that also aligns with something from about two and a half thousand

00:01:02.360 years ago in Plato's Republic. The idea was put forward and this is not an exact quote but the

00:01:09.180 gist of it is those who refuse to engage in the democratic process are destined to suffer the

00:01:17.500 fate of being governed by their inferiors. And this is so true. If people who love truth and

00:01:25.580 justice and freedom decide to withdraw and pull out and not participate, you're just leaving the

00:01:32.940 door wide open for people who might not love truth and justice and freedom as much as you do

00:01:39.320 to take power and to win at the federal and provincial

00:01:46.000 and municipal and school board levels.

00:01:49.360 And so those three align.

00:01:51.220 The only thing necessary for evil to triumph

00:01:53.120 is for good people to do nothing.

00:01:55.920 Politics, if you don't do politics,

00:01:57.620 politics will be done unto you,

00:01:59.000 and those who refuse to engage

00:02:00.720 will suffer the fate of being governed by their inferiors. 0.99

00:02:04.540 So this is a great way.

00:02:06.680 kudos to to jason and the organizers for starting off 2026 with this conference big round of applause

00:02:13.720 for jason and all the the good people to put this together

00:02:19.100 some phenomenal people were introduced by jason this morning i want to add uh one more freedom

00:02:27.280 fighter um worthy of introduction we've got a problem in canada with the

00:02:33.760 law societies and the colleges of physicians and surgeons and all these regulatory bodies

00:02:40.360 that are censoring professionals and promoting woke totalitarian ideology of equity, diversity,

00:02:48.540 inclusion. And it's not an easy thing for any lawyer to stand up to the law society in his or

00:02:56.460 her province, because that law society has the power, like a tarantula, to take away your license 1.00

00:03:01.780 to earn a living. And we have a very courageous person with us today who is actually suing

00:03:07.040 the Law Society of Alberta. Big round of applause for Roger Song. Roger, stand up, please.

00:03:15.420 So, Roger.

00:03:22.700 This court action is funded by the Justice Centre. One of the lawyers in our network

00:03:29.360 is representing Roger. Lost a trial. We're now on to the Alberta Court of Appeal. So

00:03:36.040 today I'm going to talk about the bad news, the good news, and the action plan. The bad

00:03:42.720 news would actually take several hours to do a comprehensive review. We're not going

00:03:48.800 there, but I'll just touch on a few points, kind of like the tip of the iceberg. Currently

00:03:54.280 Before Parliament, we have three bills, which, if a fourth bill, the reintroduction of the

00:04:01.240 Online Harms Act is added, can very quickly turn Canada into a police state. We're not that far

00:04:08.040 away from it right now. We're in very serious danger. We've got before Parliament Bill C-2,

00:04:13.780 the Strong Borders Act. It should be called the Strong Surveillance Act. It's a horrible piece

00:04:18.640 legislation that among other things creates the Authorized Access to

00:04:25.000 Information Act which would empower hundreds if not thousands of federal

00:04:30.080 government officials to go after privacy and to demand subscriber data from

00:04:37.420 companies. We got Bill C-8 which if passed would actually give the federal

00:04:42.400 government the power to kick Canadians off the internet without warning, without

00:04:47.740 a trial. We've got Bill C-9, which not only threatens religious freedom, but is going to

00:04:54.120 open the door to becoming more like the United Kingdom, where over 30 people a day are criminally

00:05:02.720 charged over their Facebook commentary. And Bill C-9, the so-called Combating Hate Act,

00:05:11.620 would remove a current thing that's in place currently for a hate speech prosecution to

00:05:19.560 advance. It needs the permission of the Attorney General, the Justice Minister. Bill C9 would get

00:05:24.720 rid of that requirement and leave it up to local police, local Crown prosecutors to have the full

00:05:30.140 discretion to prosecute. So Bill C9 is a serious threat to free expression. Then we've got already

00:05:39.120 in place the online streaming act c11 which actually gives the crtc the canadian radio

00:05:44.640 television and telecommunications commission gives them authority over the internet as broadcasting

00:05:51.920 that's already a law on the books since 2023 we've got the online news act which uh was supposed to

00:06:00.640 help canadian journalism but ended up reducing the viewership and canadians can no longer

00:06:06.160 use Facebook and other social media to forward news links to each other.

00:06:10.320 That's already on the books for the past two years. Then we have the threat of the

00:06:14.300 Online Harms Act, which thankfully died

00:06:18.100 with the April 2025 election, but the Online Harms Act

00:06:22.480 would empower the Canadian Human Rights Commission

00:06:25.680 to do new prosecutions against people over

00:06:30.400 non-criminal offensive speech. It would

00:06:34.480 create a digital safety commission to enforce regulations passed by the

00:06:39.420 federal cabinet without input from Parliament to censor the internet, would

00:06:44.500 also empower judges to lock you up or to place you under house arrest with an

00:06:49.280 ankle bracelet even if you've not been charged with or convicted of any crime.

00:06:53.820 So that's the Online Harms Act. They're threatening to bring that back. We've got

00:06:59.840 problem with a woke transgender ideology that has infiltrated all the 1.00

00:07:05.520 establishments. Mia did a superb fantastic presentation on that so don't

00:07:11.180 need to go into that but it is a problem. We've got a divisive racist

00:07:17.600 orientation where people actually believe in that your ancestry, your

00:07:23.900 ethnicity, your descent, your race should determine your legal rights and

00:07:29.280 freedoms. It's a sick, perverted, twisted doctrine, but it's gaining ground 0.97

00:07:34.560 currently. We had the Cowichan decision in British Columbia where it put into 0.98

00:07:40.680 jeopardy the land titles, property rights of homeowners in Richmond. And then last

00:07:48.900 but not least, we've got a serious problem with the judiciary. I wrote a

00:07:53.580 book about it, Corrupted by Fear. I've got copies there at the back. I think I've

00:07:57.760 got a dozen or so left that I brought with me from Calgary this morning. Corrupted by Fear goes

00:08:03.320 through how some Canadian judges wrote the media narrative into their court rulings totally

00:08:10.780 unsupported by evidence placed before the court, which is a very serious problem. So Corrupted by

00:08:16.300 Fear includes the judiciary, but also the other establishments, the media, where the fear-mongering

00:08:24.260 in 2020 really took over to a very sick and very dangerous extent.

00:08:31.680 I'll stop with the bad news there.

00:08:33.420 That's enough.

00:08:34.220 That's just the tip of the iceberg.

00:08:36.200 The good news is Canadians are fighting back.

00:08:38.940 The good news is there are more Canadians today who are awake and alert and active than

00:08:45.560 what was the case in 2019.

00:08:46.940 so

00:08:49.060 so the next waves of assaults on our charter rights and freedoms whether they're done in the

00:08:59.700 name of a scary virus or whether they're done to save us from the climate holocaust and burning 0.70

00:09:06.540 into a crisp whatever remember politicians never take away our rights and freedoms without offering

00:09:12.400 a nice sounding pretext. Never. It's always about safety. We got to protect you from hatred and

00:09:20.280 protect you from misinformation and disinformation and protect you from terrorists, protect you from

00:09:25.800 a virus. We got to do this to protect our national security, right? There's always a nice sounding

00:09:32.240 pretext but I think there are more Canadians that are awake and alert to

00:09:39.560 these false pretexts than what was the case six years ago when when the so

00:09:47.540 called the two weeks to flatten the curve were first imposed on us six years

00:09:51.520 ago and this is good news because tyrants need slaves and slaves look to 0.55

00:09:59.260 tyrants. And a tyrant cannot exert tyranny over a population of free independent people who think

00:10:09.180 and who assume responsibility for their lives. Tyrants need people with a slave-like mentality. 0.60

00:10:19.080 And these people do exist. We saw this, we've seen it historically, we saw this in Germany in the

00:10:27.820 20s and 30s where there are people who actually want the government to tell them what to think

00:10:34.480 and how to think and how to believe and and how to live their lives etc etc some people

00:10:40.160 they have that slave mindset and they want the tyrant to run their lives and you know we we saw

00:10:48.280 that same mindset sadly among some of our brothers and sisters and neighbors and colleagues people

00:10:56.080 that we had gone to church with, that same mentality of wanting the tyrant to tell them

00:11:04.080 how to think and what to believe and how to live their lives. So tyrants look to slaves,

00:11:11.980 slaves look to tyrants, but the good news is that there are more Canadians today than six years ago 1.00

00:11:17.300 who are awake and alert and assuming responsibilities.

00:11:24.100 One thing that's always encouraged me when I see how dark the times are,

00:11:29.640 and things might get worse before they get better,

00:11:32.220 I had the good fortune, the privilege of being in Poland at Christmastime 1987.

00:11:39.200 And this was when Gorbachev was in power.

00:11:41.340 He was talking about glasnost, which was openness,

00:11:43.760 us, perestroika, the transformation. And I don't speak Polish, but my Polish friends,

00:11:52.560 they spoke English and they interpreted for me. And the people that I spoke with, they

00:11:57.900 all said, think about this, December 1987, okay, they said, nothing has changed, nothing

00:12:06.260 can change, nothing will change. The people who are in power are too powerful, the status

00:12:12.520 quo is rewarding and benefiting people, they're not going to let go of their power and perks

00:12:17.560 and privileges. Nothing has changed, nothing can change, nothing will change. That was

00:12:24.260 what I heard from people in Poland Christmas 1987. Less than two years later, there's free

00:12:33.220 elections in Poland. The Barrow Wall had fallen and there's freedom and democracy in Poland less

00:12:39.380 than two years later. So why? Because there are people including Ronald Reagan and Margaret

00:12:48.260 Thatcher and Pope John Paul II and millions of people in Poland and millions of people behind

00:12:53.660 the Iron Curtain that were speaking truth to power and that were persevering. And so action

00:13:02.460 plan. We have to change the culture. Culture, when I talk about the culture, I'm not necessarily

00:13:08.760 talking about, you know, the opera and the ballet or 17th century French literature.

00:13:16.160 I'm talking about the dominant, prevailing attitudes and beliefs of people.

00:13:23.320 That is the culture. It's the prevailing beliefs.

00:13:26.540 Culture is incredibly powerful.

00:13:28.140 Law follows politics. Politics follows culture.

00:13:30.580 an example of this many of you will will remember the the 80s the 70s some of you

00:13:38.920 remember the 60s and the 50s we didn't have the Canadian Charter of Rights and

00:13:43.540 Freedoms had not yet been added to our Constitution and yet everybody knew so

00:13:48.520 there's no Charter setting out your rights specifically on paper everybody

00:13:54.480 knew that a man is innocent until proven guilty a man has a right to an accused

00:14:02.940 person has a right to a fair trial and an accused person has a right to remain

00:14:09.300 silent so that you cannot have police extracting a false confession out of you

00:14:15.420 through torture these were completely embedded into our legal system every

00:14:20.860 lawyer, every judge, every person knew this and understood this. And so without Canadian 0.99

00:14:26.860 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you had good, decent protection for the rights of somebody

00:14:33.200 who's criminally accused. That's an example of culture. But we Canadians, not necessarily people

00:14:41.420 in this room so much, but as a country, we have abdicated our responsibility to teach ourselves

00:14:49.180 and to teach our children, our grandchildren about the free society,

00:14:52.960 why it's worth preserving, why it's worth defending.

00:14:56.680 We have allowed government to take over more and more of our lives

00:15:01.220 and to decide on education and health care and to run,

00:15:06.820 look after widows and orphans,

00:15:08.280 all of these things that government has taken over.

00:15:12.140 But the government that can do everything for you

00:15:14.880 is the government that can take everything from you.

00:15:17.080 and the government that knows everything about you is the government that can take everything

00:15:24.400 away from you. So we need to work on that culture. Things are not going to get better in the next

00:15:30.880 few days or weeks or months. This is going to take years and decades. We have to transform

00:15:36.800 our culture and we have to take back responsibility and that's hard. It's very easy to give up the

00:15:44.000 nine-to-three babysitting service that our tax dollars provide and to take

00:15:49.820 back assume responsibility for educating our children our grandchildren

00:15:54.940 when government takes it over you lose that control so we decided you know

00:16:02.400 collectively as a country that the government's going to run health care

00:16:06.320 and maybe initially it didn't produce terrible results but we see now for

00:16:13.560 For example, the Delta Hospice Society in British Columbia wants to provide palliative

00:16:18.420 care for people who don't want to commit suicide.

00:16:22.440 They want palliative care, they want their suffering alleviated before they die.

00:16:26.840 And the BC government says, you have to offer assisted suicide.

00:16:30.040 I don't talk about MAID, it's a misleading term.

00:16:32.680 It's assisted suicide, you have to offer it.

00:16:34.880 They refused, the government took it over, and now you've got assisted suicide being

00:16:39.460 pushed on people all the time.

00:16:41.900 keep on hearing uh justice center is we've got one of our researchers on it right now we're releasing

00:16:46.940 a report about assisted suicide in canada that's going to be released later this month but there's

00:16:53.180 an example if you let the government run it uh they're not going to do a good job so we have a

00:17:00.140 long ways to go in reclaiming the culture and educating ourselves our children and our

00:17:05.580 our grandchildren but that is the effort that does pay off when we change the

00:17:11.880 culture that's going to trickle up to the lawyers the police the prosecutors

00:17:18.080 the judges the doctors the medical establishment the legal establishment

00:17:23.760 the universities so we have to change and transform the culture and that is

00:17:29.820 it's a lot of thankless work and a lot of it not particularly interesting or

00:17:36.660 thrilling and you know most of it quite thankless but it's just a lot of hard

00:17:41.100 work to to transform our culture but that's what we have to do and we do that

00:17:45.380 through for example conferences and events like this we do that through

00:17:50.160 being active in the democratic process at all of the levels. So, in closing, I want to encourage

00:18:01.740 everybody to cultivate and to practice two virtues. The virtue of courage to speak truth to power.

00:18:08.820 Keep on practicing that. Don't be intimidated by the name-calling. Perhaps I'm preaching to

00:18:14.420 the converted, but you know that if you speak truth, you're going to be subjected to the name

00:18:18.900 calling, and they're going to say that you are one or more of a racist, misogynist, homophobic,

00:18:26.840 transphobic, anti-science, and all the name callings there. But when you get called names, 0.91

00:18:33.660 take that as a sign of encouragement, because it means that the other side does not have an

00:18:37.460 intelligent argument to match yours. So don't be intimidated by the name calling. Keep on speaking

00:18:42.720 truth to power, and that is to practice courage. The second one, just as important, is perseverance.

00:18:49.880 We're not going to turn things around in the next few days or weeks or months. It's going to take

00:18:57.860 years and decades. So we need that. What the enemy, in every sense of the word, the political,

00:19:06.060 the cultural, the spiritual, the enemy wants you to give up and quit. The most powerful tool that

00:19:11.940 the enemy has is discouragement. So cultivate that virtue of perseverance to keep on going.

00:19:21.980 And even if things get worse before they get better, we're going to win in the end. As Leighton

00:19:27.980 Grace said, if you unleash truth, truth is like a lion. It goes out and it pounces and it kills

00:19:34.620 the lies. So when you speak truth, you unleash power and truth is like a lion that goes about.

00:19:41.940 so we are going to transform our culture because truth always vanquishes the lie

00:19:48.020 because of the long-run freedom will prevail over tyranny and because

00:19:53.740 justice will crush injustice and we are Canadians and we know that quitters

00:20:01.280 never win and winners never quit thank you

00:20:11.940 Thank you.

The Critical Compass Podcast - March 07, 2026

“If You Don’t Do Politics, Politics Will Be Done TO You＂ - John Carpay, JCCF

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