00:12:40.420the Nuremberg Code says there must be fully informed consent
00:12:45.920and fully voluntary consent to medical treatment.
00:12:49.760So I have these massive violations of the Nuremberg Code
00:12:52.120right here in canada and people are applauding it and uh so now on the bright side uh you mentioned
00:12:59.640that bill c2 has been split into different parts and that is a direct result of so many canadians
00:13:05.720contacting their member parliament saying bill c2 violates freedom it violates privacy it's a big
00:13:13.000step towards turning canada into a police state and the mps got so much pushback that the government
00:13:19.160took out more palatable part of it about our immigration, refugees, our borders, put that into
00:13:26.300a separate bill, Bill C-12, which may very well get the support of the conservatives. They can get
00:13:31.920that through to please President Trump. So we've got our, you know, different immigration or refugee
00:13:38.460policies. And then the rest of Bill C-2, they have said they still want to pass it, but it's pretty
00:13:44.940clear they've put it on the back burner because they know that if they try to have Bill C-2
00:13:50.320passed in its current form, it might not get through. John, of all the rights we have
00:13:56.500through the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in your opinion, what is the most important of them?
00:14:05.260And I know it's a tough question. It's like saying, what's your favorite breakfast cereal?
00:14:09.880because there's many of them and it's difficult to, you know, discern which one may be the most
00:14:16.120important. In my opinion, it's the freedom of speech. If they shut us up, then everything else
00:14:20.880goes away. But that's only my take. What's yours? If the government took away every single right and
00:14:28.500freedom that you have, but left you with your freedom of expression intact, you could use your
00:14:34.100freedom of expression to collaborate with others, to get your message out, to organize, and you
00:14:40.180could use your freedom of expression to win back all the other rights and freedoms that you've lost.
00:14:45.300If you get rid of your freedom of expression, then you're no longer even in a position to
00:14:50.280defend yourself against the gradual removal of other rights and freedoms. So it's on a philosophical
00:14:57.080level, it might not be the most important, but on a practical level of how do we preserve the free
00:15:01.860society, the freedom of expression is probably the most important freedom.
00:15:07.440In the past, I know there have been some hate speech cases in this country. The one that comes
00:15:14.120to my mind first would be Erst Zundel back in, I think it was the 80s and the 90s. Are there any
00:15:20.520others that stand out to you in terms of the government saying you can't say that and we're
00:15:25.240going to put you in jail for doing so? Well, the Supreme Court, the Zundel decision was very good.
00:15:31.860And the Supreme Court, one of the passages that I just love, Chief Justice Beverly McLaughlin said that majority opinion has no need for constitutional protection because it is tolerated in any event.
00:15:48.020But the reason we have freedom of expression is to protect the peaceful expression of opinions that the majority views as false or wrong or damaging, destructive, toxic.
00:16:01.640And so the whole point of constitutional freedoms, it's the same with religion.
00:16:05.220You know, if you're part of this, you know, non-church going kind of believing God, but, you know, whatever, right?
00:16:12.380If that's kind of your religious perspective, you don't need constitutional protection for that.
00:16:18.620You need constitutional protection if you belong to an unpopular religion so that you have the right to stand on a street corner and hold up a sign or, you know, proclaim your faith to people who might not be interested, etc.
00:16:31.340So what the Supreme Court has done since Zundel is they have slowly moved away from that. They haven't formally repudiated it. A lawyer can still go into court and rely on Zundel as authority for the proposition that freedom of expression in the Charter is there to protect views that the majority considers to be wrong or false.
00:16:55.300It's still on the books, but a more recent decision was in Watcott, where a social conservative activist was handing out flyers, denouncing gay sex and saying, you know, it could send you to hell.
00:17:10.340And flyers were obviously very offensive.
00:17:12.580And the Supreme Court ruled against him at the end of the day and went so far as to conflate criticism of sexual behavior with an attack on people who are practicing that behavior, which is bizarre.
00:17:31.580So that was a human rights tribunal case.
00:17:34.320He was not charged with criminal hate speech.
00:17:35.980He has been, though, the same guy, the Toronto Gay Pride Parade.
00:17:40.380he and some buddies dressed up as green gay zombies if you can believe it and they handed
00:17:47.520out flyers that were tucked into a package that looked like it might have a condom inside but
00:17:51.900when you took it out it was a piece of paper and it had photographs of really awful diseases that
00:17:57.680bill watcott says you can get from engaging in gay sex and it's been criminally charged and it's
00:18:04.700been hanging over his head for years he was uh acquitted and then the crown appealed and now
00:18:10.300a retrial has been ordered. This is about handing out, you know, pamphlets that were no doubt were
00:18:15.480very offensive to some of the recipients or maybe to a lot of the recipients were very offended by
00:18:20.340it. But it's a pamphlet. He didn't say that anybody should be put to death, you know, but
00:18:25.200this is characterized as hate speech for a guy who is undiplomatic and very aggressively denounces
00:18:32.640gay sex as being bad for your body and bad for your soul is being charged with hate speech.
00:18:39.280That's where we're at in Canada today.
00:18:41.220Yeah, it just seems to me that, you know, the term hate,
00:18:44.240and I think we've talked about this before, is very subjective.
00:18:46.920One man's hate is another man's I don't care.
00:18:49.400And, you know, one of the things you said there was
00:18:53.340if somebody says something that goes against the dogma, right,
00:18:57.920the popular vision of what this thing is supposed to be,
00:19:01.980if you say something that is completely contrary to that,
00:19:05.140then you can be charged with hate speech?
00:19:08.920So it's not quite as simple, but what's disconcerting about the hate speech provisions is that hate is an emotion and it is experienced subjectively by people.
00:19:20.620So I don't really know if somebody else is hateful or not, right?
00:19:25.220You'll see you get some Palestinian, pro-Palestinian protesters chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.
00:19:32.780Is it possible that that person hates Jews?
00:19:38.920In terms of any slogan, it's the subjective feeling of a subjective perception of the listener who decides whether something is hateful or not.
00:19:52.040But that's their problem though, isn't it?
00:19:53.560It's that person's problem, how they take something that somebody says or writes down.
00:19:59.580It's not something that an outsider, like a judge, can decide upon.
00:20:03.660Well, the Supreme Court of Canada about 30 years ago came this close to striking down the criminal hate speech provisions as an unjustified violation of freedom of expression.
00:20:18.600It was a narrow majority. It was a four to three ruling. And the Supreme Court, the majority said, yes, the criminal code prohibition on the willful promotion of hatred is a violation of free expression.
00:20:32.580but uh we think it's justified for purposes of social harmony that you you cannot be willfully
00:20:39.560promoting hatred against a group based on their sex race religion age social harmony is not within
00:20:46.920their purview when it comes to a decision like that i mean in the charter of rights and freedoms
00:20:53.120it gives us the right to expression freedom of expression right and you know this new uh trend
00:21:00.840of of the left more than anybody else saying oh my god that's an attack that's an attack as you
00:21:06.780pointed out earlier right it's not an attack it's something that i said my grandfather told me when
00:21:12.140i was five years old and i came home crying from school because some bully was calling me fat
00:21:16.860he said sticks and stones may break my bones son but names will never hurt me where did that go
00:21:23.240it's uh you know a free society requires a thick skin and it requires some maturity
00:21:29.920of amongst people and certainly what i've seen on campus uh as a lawyer i've taken on
00:21:37.540many free speech cases on campus and it's this uh just notion that you're entitled to go through
00:21:44.640life even on a university campus and and not hear things that you find disturbing and so
00:21:51.960we've lost a lot of that maturity uh i'm 58 years old i grew up in the 1980s and i i have no
00:21:58.940recollection of of cancel culture being there you know if somebody said something really horrible
00:22:04.340uh there'd be a negative reaction from community members and it's oh what you're saying it's it's
00:22:09.940terrible it's totally wrong you never to in my experience you didn't hear calls for that person
00:22:16.860should be silenced they should be jailed they should be criminally prosecuted that was just
00:22:21.420not part of it and we've really slid backwards uh away from the idea of a free society where
00:22:28.300we recognize that debate and and free inquiry is the road to truth and in a free society
00:22:39.020we as adults get to determine ourselves what is true or false what is hateful what is not hateful
00:22:44.760in a tyranny in a repressive regime which is what we've been heading towards it's the government
00:22:51.280decides on your behalf what is true or false what is hateful what is not hateful and the government
00:22:57.020then goes out to punish people for spreading what the government views considers to be hate or
00:23:05.160disinformation misinformation that's very scary whenever i hear about politicians uh you know
00:23:10.940say well we got to ban disinformation on the internet well yes except determines what that
00:23:18.040Who determines what is disinformation, right?
00:23:20.800You know, there's a lot of evidence coming out now suggesting that this vaccine is not,
00:23:25.840the vaccine that was imposed on Canadians four years ago is neither safe nor effective.
00:29:27.960Speaking of faith-based objection, and you mentioned the vaccines a few minutes ago, Ontario Human Rights Tribunal urged to reconsider ruling that dismissed students' faith-based objection to COVID vaccine mandate.
00:32:38.460making decisions about science in other cases,
00:32:41.980when it's a violation of our fundamental rights and freedoms,
00:32:44.740She says, oh, I'm neither equipped nor inclined to resolve scientific controversies about COVID-19.
00:32:50.440Sounds like giving reverence to the government.
00:32:53.640And I know that judges do that as kind of a practice.
00:32:57.400So there's more of an onus on the complainant, right?
00:33:01.220I mean, when you go to court against the government, you really have to come packing.
00:33:07.480Depends on the issue, though, because we had a ruling in Alberta a few months ago
00:33:12.380where uh the premier daniel smith had announced i think it was back in january that the government
00:33:17.760would be uh protecting children and adolescents from transgender ideology and that uh children
00:33:26.520under the age of 16 would not be getting puberty blockers and opposite sex hormones that could
00:33:30.780render them permanently infertile and and forever unable to become mothers and fathers and that
00:33:39.760parents had to be notified if the child if the boy was going to start using a girl's name wearing
00:33:45.540girls clothing girls sports teams etc parent would have to be notified of their own child
00:33:52.820taking steps on this journey towards a futile quest of trying to become the opposite sex
00:33:58.760and so very sensible policy in line with what other governments are doing all around the world
00:34:06.000They're backing away from this transgender rage and or trend, I mean to say.
00:34:12.680And so there was a gay rights group, EGAL, took the government's policies to court and they very quickly got an interim injunction where the judge agreed with her argument that somehow children have a charter right to keep their own parents in the dark, which is ridiculous.
00:34:32.900You can't get a tattoo under the age of 18 without parental consent.
00:34:36.680Parents need to sign permission just for a school field trip to the zoo.
00:34:41.140And yet somehow it's okay to keep parents in the dark about what's happening with their own child at school under the influence of God knows who, whatever transgender political activist is getting access to the kids.
00:34:55.040and so um so judges are sometimes they're too deferential to government certainly during
00:35:02.100covid and vaccine passports and that uh but other times depending on the case before them judges are
00:35:08.020decidedly not deferential to governments you know what every time you're on there's so many
00:35:13.400offshoot questions that i want to interrupt you and ask you about and and i just i don't want to
00:35:18.280interrupt you because you're you're on a roll yourself but what goes into john what goes into
00:35:22.500a judge's decision are they allowed to ask other people what they think like honey this is a tough
00:35:27.220one can you help me out with this or are they like sequestered and they have to come up with
00:35:32.540the ruling on their own well the the ruling is supposed to be based only on evidence that was
00:35:38.540placed before the court and i think in the past and and probably still today if it's a murder trial
00:35:44.100you know the judge will tell the jury you you shouldn't listen to media in the first place
00:35:49.340in regards to this, you know, criminal trial.
00:35:52.800But if you do, you have to completely disregard it
00:35:55.180and you have to look only at the evidence