The John-Henry Westen Show - June 15, 2022


Canadian pilot says 'individual action' is required to successfully fight COVID tyranny

Topics
Free to Fly organization media pressure on government
Hosted by
John-Henry Westen
Mentioned
George Hill John Henry Justin Trudeau Alexander Solzhenitsyn Matt Stoller Biden
Pro-life activist fighting cancer says assisted suicide should never be an option Retired CIA officer： Marxist groups are 'financing' and 'directing' pro-abortion violence

Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

167.92

Word count

3,677

Sentence count

245

Harmful content

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Captain Greg Hill is the President of Free to Fly, a group dedicated to restoring freedom to Canadians who are unable to fly within the country. Captain Hill joins us to talk about the current situation, and what the organization can do to help.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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 Would you believe it? Canadians are still locked down, in a manner of speaking.
00:00:06.660 All over the world, freedoms have been basically restored to everyone.
00:00:11.120 In fact, the restrictions on Canadians have, for the most part, never happened to much of the rest of the world.
00:00:17.680 Canadians who are unvaccinated against the COVID are unable to fly.
00:00:23.860 Unable to fly to another country.
00:00:26.680 Unable to fly within their country.
00:00:30.000 This is so strange.
00:00:32.220 In fact, Canadians who are unvaccinated against COVID are unable to travel at all because they can't even go to the United States and fly.
00:00:40.840 Because at the border, President Biden has decided unvaccinated Canadians are not welcome.
00:00:48.040 We have with us today a captain from a major Canadian airline who's going to get into this with us to explain what's going on, what's the agenda behind this, but also what we can do to help.
00:01:03.420 This is the John Henry Weston Show. Stay tuned.
00:01:06.920 Captain Greg Hill, thank you for being with us.
00:01:30.200 Thanks so much for having me, John Henry. It's an honor to be here.
00:01:32.260 Let's begin, as we always do, at the sign of the cross.
00:01:36.360 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
00:01:41.380 So, Captain Hill, so let's, first of all, tell us a little bit about yourself.
00:01:49.480 Well, as you said, I'm a captain with a major Canadian airline.
00:01:53.120 I've been there for 15 years.
00:01:54.360 Prior to that, I was a pilot with the military, flew C-130s with the Royal Canadian Air Force.
00:02:01.380 It's been a dream of mine since I was about 13 years old.
00:02:05.180 I grew up in a military family.
00:02:06.820 My father was an Army officer for 37 years.
00:02:10.960 So, these themes and the passion for liberty and freedom are something that I came about, honestly, from a fairly young age.
00:02:20.300 And that's it in a nutshell.
00:02:22.700 I won't go back to 1960-something when I was born, but that's the basics.
00:02:28.860 Beautiful.
00:02:29.480 Now, you're in charge of an organization called Free to Fly.
00:02:32.740 Is that right?
00:02:33.800 Yeah.
00:02:34.300 Myself and my good friend, Matt Sattler, direct Free to Fly together.
00:02:38.160 And that was born around about April of 2021, in part because we felt we'd probably be at the pointy end of any vaccination mandate.
00:02:48.860 We've been journeying, as many of your viewers probably had, with the COVID narrative for the better part of a year already there.
00:02:57.240 It didn't take very long.
00:02:58.500 I just essentially, I remember it like it was yesterday.
00:03:01.500 They sat down with a spreadsheet, plugged in some government data, and about a half an hour later just thought, something doesn't make sense here.
00:03:08.520 So, fast forward to April, it started with a fairly small group of pilots, then grew into all sorts of other aviation professionals, flood attendants, air traffic controllers, what we call under-the-wing workers, baggage handlers, maintenance.
00:03:21.120 And most importantly, and I want to focus on this as well, we've got about 39,000 passengers who you very eloquently articulated at the outset here are unable to travel within the country or outside the country.
00:03:38.560 And we hear heartbreaking stories every day, so that's the organization, Free to Fly, where we're really dedicated to the freedoms of every Canadian coast-to-coast, whether they're quote-unquote members or not.
00:03:52.800 It's obviously the mobility rights that we've lost are near and dear to our heart as aviation professionals, but most importantly, it's every freedom really that we've lost over these past couple of years.
00:04:05.160 Yeah. Now, this is very interesting. Your background is very interesting, because as someone in the military, the Canadian military, you vowed also to fight for Canadians for their freedom.
00:04:16.560 And then as a pilot, as a professional pilot, commercial pilot, you are engaged in bringing Canadians not only just to travel, also to get to the celebrations of their loved ones, either their life or to be there for their funerals.
00:04:34.440 All sorts of absolutely necessary travel. And I'll even ask you, Canada is a country that maybe most people don't know. You can't very easily drive from one side to the other. Tell us, if you will, from your experience, some of those aspects about Canada that make it very difficult to travel in. And what are people traveling for?
00:04:56.060 Well, it's literally hundreds, if not thousands of stories every day, we get scores of emails from people that are asking, mainly guidance for, for what am I supposed to do? Do you have a way? Can you give us some guidance?
00:05:13.180 And we do. And we do. There's, you have to be somewhat creative in terms of, let's say you want to go from Toronto to Frankfurt or something.
00:05:21.160 You're probably not going to get there. You're probably not going to get there flying out of Toronto on a, on an Air Canada flight, for instance.
00:05:27.820 So religious exemptions are one way that people are, are, are finding a way around these types of things, but, but the stories are, are really heartbreaking and you highlighted it very well.
00:05:38.820 I mean, these are one of the, the, the prime tenants of a, of a democratic civilized society is the ability, for instance, to honor your dead.
00:05:47.820 And we're at a point here where we hear stories of people whose parents, let's say, are dying on the other side of the country or who have passed away and they weren't able.
00:05:55.820 I got a story last week from a gentleman that drove thousands of miles to be with his father before he died.
00:06:02.820 And he got a phone call 40 minutes from destination after traveling thousands of miles.
00:06:07.820 And these are the stories that Canadians need to hear.
00:06:09.820 Those are the most heartbreaking one.
00:06:11.820 We've got another story that comes to mind, just as we're sitting here, another woman out west whose parents are, are in Quebec and she would drive, but she, she is unable due to some physical limitations.
00:06:23.820 So she literally cannot drive.
00:06:25.820 And, and the government's answer is basically, well, make the right choice.
00:06:30.820 It's, it's extortion is what it is set aside your, your, your humanity, set aside your heart and do something that is contrary to your own convictions.
00:06:40.820 It's in order to be with your loved ones.
00:06:43.820 And, and sadly, some people are doing that and they don't mean that in a condescending way.
00:06:47.820 I mean, in a, in a way that leads to all sorts of existential crisis for them because they think, what am I supposed to do?
00:06:54.820 I want to honor my father and my mother, but, but at the same time, I have to break all sorts of other pieces of my conscience.
00:07:01.820 It's a, those are some of the, just some of the stories we're hearing.
00:07:04.820 And on a personal level, our oldest daughter is getting married next month.
00:07:09.820 And my parents live out in BC.
00:07:11.820 It's going to be a long drive.
00:07:13.820 I mean, the, the, the upside is they're going to be with us probably for an extended period, because when you drive from BC to Ontario, you don't just stay for a couple of days.
00:07:22.820 Right.
00:07:23.820 So trying to find a glass half full there.
00:07:25.820 But it literally takes, you know, but if you have to stop at some point, which otherwise it's crazy, it takes you over a week.
00:07:35.820 So, and that's driving so persistently every day for hours and hours and hours on end.
00:07:41.820 It's, it's ridiculous.
00:07:44.820 So this has become an impossible situation in Canada. 0.82
00:07:49.820 And yet we still fancy ourselves some kind of civilized society.
00:07:54.820 So what does this compare?
00:07:57.820 Like, have you talked to colleagues in other nations who, you know, pilots as well, who are, you know, just free of this.
00:08:06.820 Do they ever marvel at what we're going through in Canada?
00:08:09.820 Yeah.
00:08:10.820 Well, it's an interesting question because just over the past few weeks, we brokered a global coalition that brings together other organizations similar to free to fly.
00:08:19.820 There's us freedom flyers in the States, the Australian freedom, freedom flyers groups across Europe, the United Kingdom and otherwise to advocate really the prime focus that we're, we're bringing up right now is the compromise in aviation safety due to vaccine injury amongst our colleagues.
00:08:36.820 But we're, we're in a very small, not very honorable crowd in the sense that even our colleagues in the United States and Europe, let's say, look at us and think, wow, that's crazy.
00:08:51.820 Even, even by, by the, the standard that they've been through over the past year, Australia is probably a close, close second.
00:08:59.820 But they, even, even amongst our colleagues, we have to explain, oh, this is how it works in Canada.
00:09:04.820 And they're like, wow, that's, that is really unique would be a kind word.
00:09:09.820 So what does it look like on the pilot's end?
00:09:14.820 So in other words, and pilots and other professionals in aviation who are support workers or whatever they are, but in terms of their livelihoods have been stripped from a lot of them, haven't they?
00:09:24.820 Well, absolutely.
00:09:25.820 Well, absolutely.
00:09:26.820 It's, it's a little bit different depending on, on what company you're working for.
00:09:30.820 Some companies are not that it's, it's minimal by any stretch, but they're on unpaid leave facing termination.
00:09:37.820 Others such as WestJet were outright terminated last fall if they didn't declare their, their status at all.
00:09:44.820 So it's, you know, it's, it depends on where you're at in life, how, how dire that is.
00:09:51.820 But I like, I know of more than one, what I would call aviation family where both the husband and wife were airline pilots.
00:09:59.820 They both, for reasons of principle, courageously stood their ground and refused to concede.
00:10:05.820 And they've, they've erased now both incomes and I could, I could give you all sorts of examples of the different kinds of employment people have been, have been brought to.
00:10:16.820 But, but these to get yourself to a major, a major airline, you're typically talking.
00:10:22.820 And now it's a little bit different over the past few years because the industry is so short of pilots, but certainly when I joined, you were decades into the career already.
00:10:29.820 And it had taken you a very long time and a lot of hard work, no matter what that includes over the past couple of years.
00:10:36.820 And now that's completely erased and you find yourself essentially most of the time working in entry level jobs.
00:10:43.820 I I'm sitting in a, in a storage closet at a manufacturing plant, which is where I'm working nowadays.
00:10:49.820 I've got friends that are working in, in chicken processing plants.
00:10:53.820 Others have taken up truck driving and others are just burning through their life savings at a completely untenable rate.
00:11:02.820 And then, and I honor every single one of those.
00:11:05.820 It's it's hard to wrap your head around, but, but these are principled people who aren't stubborn.
00:11:13.820 They're typically quiet, careful thinkers that have gotten themselves into the state because of, because of what the government's decided to do.
00:11:24.820 Yeah.
00:11:25.820 It's an amazing thing.
00:11:26.820 Normal citizens have become the new fighters for freedom in our society, having to sacrifice themselves very much like your former career in the, in the air force.
00:11:35.820 Mm hmm.
00:11:36.820 So what can Canadians do?
00:11:41.820 What can normal Canadians do to fight this, to change this?
00:11:45.820 Because it's got to change.
00:11:46.820 We can't allow Canada's great nation to go down the tubes the way it has been.
00:11:50.820 It's becoming a laughing stock of the rest of the world.
00:11:52.820 Mm hmm.
00:11:53.820 Well, it's, it's a very interesting question.
00:11:56.820 And it's, uh, life is interesting in the sense that I guess we go through what I would call seasons of, uh, of, of trying to find solutions.
00:12:05.820 And we, we went through, uh, let's say the convoy season in Ottawa.
00:12:10.820 And I think that was very telling in the sense that it showed that individual actions can morph into something that actually changes the landscapes of society.
00:12:18.820 And if you look at the lessons of history, it's very much the same.
00:12:22.820 Um, essentially the, the history of pushing back against tyranny.
00:12:29.820 And I, I often go back to Alexander Solzhenitsyn because I think he's spoken probably more eloquently than, than almost anyone.
00:12:36.820 And he wrote a famous piece in 1973.
00:12:39.820 I believe it was called live not by lies as he watched the Soviet union descend back into the place that, that had him in the gulag for an extended period of time.
00:12:47.820 And as part of that very famous, sorry, never very famous.
00:12:52.820 It's not as famous probably as it should be that, but that, that very powerful piece.
00:12:56.820 He spoke, uh, along the line saying, if, if a thousand of us stood up, if 10,000 of us would stand up, you would not recognize our nation.
00:13:05.820 And I think part of, of what we're struggling with right now, sometimes in our nation is this idea that, that we can outsource.
00:13:14.820 A solution to the tyranny that we're up against.
00:13:16.820 That there's going to be a lawyer or two that will ride in on a white horse and, and save us all.
00:13:22.820 Or perhaps a politician will, will completely turn this around.
00:13:26.820 But, but the lessons of history tell us that is not true.
00:13:29.820 It's individual action.
00:13:30.820 And then the problem with individual action is, is it's at times glacial and painful.
00:13:36.820 It doesn't happen overnight.
00:13:38.820 It's planting seeds and waiting for them to germinate.
00:13:41.820 And I remember when I first heard about what was happening in Ottawa, we read a, uh, uh, call it a barbecue of, of like-minded friends.
00:13:50.820 And, and one of the gentlemen that, uh, was, was instrumental in starting the, uh, the convoy came and spoke.
00:13:56.820 And I, I wasn't wowed about it because I'd been in this freedom fighting thing for a while.
00:14:01.820 And I kind of seen things come and go.
00:14:02.820 And I thought, I just don't know if that's going to take off.
00:14:05.820 And I was thrilled to be wrong on a level that I don't think, you know, in terms of, it was probably the greatest PR platform in almost human history.
00:14:16.820 If you look at the impact it had on the globe, but it started by people like this gentleman driving his trailer to a barn, uh, north of Trenton and talking to 30 people at a barbecue.
00:14:28.820 So if you're sitting at home and, and you feel like what you're doing, isn't going to make a difference.
00:14:34.820 Uh, you're wrong.
00:14:36.820 And, and there, there's a famous quote.
00:14:37.820 I'm sure you've heard it by judge learn at hand.
00:14:39.820 It says liberty lies in the hearts of men and women.
00:14:41.820 When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.
00:14:45.820 No constitution, no law, no court, no court can either can likely even help it.
00:14:50.820 And I think we've got to remind ourselves of that is we are.
00:14:54.820 I wouldn't say masters of our destiny because from a faith standpoint, I don't believe that, but I do believe that change happens individually.
00:15:03.820 And the last several weeks have actually been fairly encouraging in terms of the pressure that we've seen brought to bear on this government.
00:15:09.820 You've got the Toronto star and the golden mail regularly putting columns and news articles out calling these mandates what they are unscientific nonsense.
00:15:17.820 And that's happened because courageous Canadians have been relentless in pressuring the government, whether that's in writing, in showing up on the streets of Ottawa, on small streets with placards in, in, in, in towns across this country.
00:15:33.820 It matters. So, so please do not become disheartened.
00:15:37.820 I think people are tired and they're fatigued, but you are making a difference by what you're doing.
00:15:42.820 All right. And I might add, they're not only pressuring government, they're pressuring every level of leadership in society.
00:15:49.820 So imagine how many letters, how many points of pressure, the people who run the Toronto star globe and mail son, all the TV stations are getting, even though we already know they're paid by elites in this world to take the COVID narrative, to take the lockdown narrative.
00:16:08.820 But they're getting pressure from family members, from their own, all the little people that go to support the network, there's a lot of pressure going on.
00:16:18.820 So we have to speak the truth to power, as they say.
00:16:21.820 Yeah.
00:16:22.820 And then it's being done.
00:16:24.820 Well, I mean, if I can bring up, I think you bring up a really great point there, John Henry, is I often say, start local.
00:16:30.820 Don't send a letter to Justin Trudeau if you haven't spoken to your mayor or your MPP, right?
00:16:35.820 Start at the lowest level you can. And sometimes that's your neighbor or a school board member or whoever else.
00:16:41.820 And you bring up a great point in terms of media. That's a great pressure point.
00:16:46.820 And I would also say leaders in industry.
00:16:48.820 That includes, obviously, when we're talking about these travel mandates, the airlines themselves.
00:16:53.820 And I've been very disappointed that our airline executives outside the WestJet CEO have remained silent throughout this.
00:17:00.820 And they would not be in some sort of crazy fringe group to speak out against these mandates.
00:17:05.820 They would be within the mainstream. And their silence is not an actable mission.
00:17:10.820 It's a choice. And it's a choice to be complicit in medical apartheid in this country.
00:17:14.820 And I would call on each of them, whether they're the CEOs of an airport or an airline or otherwise,
00:17:20.820 to stand up courageously and call these what they are and ask for them to be reversed because they do have standing with the government.
00:17:28.820 And it does make a difference.
00:17:31.820 They certainly have the public backing right now.
00:17:34.820 This has been a general recognition of a vast majority of Canadians.
00:17:39.820 In fact, a lot of the world looking in saying, gosh, you know, feeling really bad for Canadians.
00:17:46.820 Whereas Canada used to be regarded as one of the most free, one of the most desirable countries to live in.
00:17:52.820 We have shot that reputation and continue to do so.
00:17:56.820 But let me ask you, Greg, what do you think really is underlying all of this?
00:18:03.820 Because this is an insanity that's infected Canada, actually most of the world. 0.94
00:18:09.820 But beyond only travel is a major restriction, obviously, but we've had all sorts of things.
00:18:16.820 The whole moniker of my body, my choice, even used by the other side of the life argument,
00:18:22.820 where we come from at life site, but even that's been turned on its head to insanity.
00:18:27.820 So where do you think all this is coming from?
00:18:31.820 Well, I don't want to steal a couple hours here to talk about the globalist agenda, but it really is about control.
00:18:41.820 Ultimately, if I can distill it down to its very basics.
00:18:44.820 I'm sure your viewers are up to speed on the WEF and the WHO and a lot of these globalist entities that are looking to really transform society into their own socialist dream.
00:18:56.820 It's this asinine idea that, well, communism has killed millions of people in the past, but this time somehow we're going to do it differently.
00:19:03.820 Right. And arresting control from people. 0.94
00:19:06.820 Power concedes nothing without a demand.
00:19:09.820 It never did and it never will.
00:19:11.820 And so the power and the control of government is going to expand to the furthest extreme that it can unless it's brought into some constraint by the populist as a whole.
00:19:24.820 We're kind of going back to to what I said before.
00:19:27.820 So I think Mr. Trudeau is is one of the shining stars of their new their new elites.
00:19:36.820 I at this point, honestly, I wrestle a little bit to understand his own personal strategy, and then I don't spend a lot of time trying to understand it because I do think it's warped on the level that is difficult to grasp.
00:19:50.820 And from a political expediency standpoint, his insistence on maintaining these mandates at this stage while his own caucus revolts is is not wise politically.
00:19:59.820 So it's a level of perversion to use a fairly strong word, but I think it's accurate.
00:20:05.820 It's a level of perversion that is difficult for the average freedom loving, kind hearted person to wrap their head around.
00:20:16.820 But I keep saying if we think this vaccine mandate COVID narrative is the end of it, we're very naive.
00:20:25.820 And I think we've got to remind ourselves that we are in a marathon.
00:20:30.820 It's not a short race. We're not looking to just reverse these mandates.
00:20:34.820 I know I'm in my 50s, so take this with with that in mind.
00:20:39.820 But I think this battle for freedom is something that I'm going to be fighting probably till the day I die for the sake of my kids and my grandkids, so that they inherit a world that I was able to enjoy.
00:20:49.820 Because right now, the trajectory that we're on is not towards a democratic, free society.
00:20:56.820 Absolutely not. What can people do? Where can people go to reach out to you to support what you're doing?
00:21:04.820 Yeah, thanks. The easiest place to go is free to fly.ca.
00:21:08.820 Those are all words, not numbers. And we've got our content on there, our social media.
00:21:15.820 We're fairly active on social media, although if I was not running this organization, I would not be on any of them.
00:21:21.820 But it's a way to get the to get the word out. And you can you can sign up there to get our to get our newsletter and to keep up to speed with with what's going on.
00:21:32.820 That's beautiful, Greg. Thank you. Thank you for fighting for freedom.
00:21:36.820 Thank you for coming on the program. Thanks so much for having me, John Henry.
00:21:41.820 God bless you and God bless all of you. We'll see you next time.
00:21:51.820 God bless you.