Canada’s Free Speech Crackdown? John Carpay's Warning
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
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Toxicity
2
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Hate speech
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Summary
In this episode of the True Patriot Love podcast, we speak with U.S. Conservative MP John Carpe about his opposition to the recent separation of Canada from the United Conservative Party of Canada. We discuss the role of the Conservative Party, the importance of a free press, and the need for a free internet.
Transcript
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well paul here we are in calgary yeah same jackets my man and uh feeling uh very proud to do that uh
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yeah we had a very interesting launch uh here in calgary as part of the uh conservative convention
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and we're out here also taking a look at what's happening on the front with uh separation which
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has become a very boily topic in the last uh 12 hours yeah very sticky yes uh and so uh you know
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while we're out here we thought it's time to meet some of the people that we admire in this town and
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get some opinion and discussion going on other topics and this is a really good example of another
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topic that on a regular basis we talk about and on a regular basis we're being faced with it doing
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what we're doing with true patriot love uh by the way don't forget to subscribe tell a friend go ahead
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to hit the note the notification button uh and uh you'll help us uh keep trucking along here today
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we're going to speak with uh john carpe and we're going to do this on the terms of uh maybe the loss
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of our freedoms and to quote him just a few moments ago i don't want to sound alarmist that uh proceeded
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to alarm me uh nonetheless and john thank you so much for joining us so glad to be with you guys
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so you know as we sat here talking just getting ready for the the show uh it occurred to us that
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you know there's a bunch of bills being passed and have been passed that are potentially going
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to limit our freedom and we've seen a trend over the last decade of this i hate to say wokeness but
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this kind of dialogue treatment that could become a matter of legality and a criminal affair for some
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people kind of position yourself and give us an idea of where we're at if you don't mind so in
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terms of bills before parliament right now i'll mention six bills and i'll i'll try and do a one
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or two sentence description of each one and then you can you know decide which ones to dive into more
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two years ago two and a half years ago we had bill c11 which was the online news act
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and sorry the online streaming act was c11 and what that did is it took the powers of the canadian
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radio television and telecommunications commission the crtc had previously been had jurisdiction
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authority over radio and television bill c11 the online streaming act extended crs crtc power over the
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internet now we didn't see changes overnight right the bill passed nothing changed life is very much
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the same but uh that online streaming act giving the crtc authority over the internet effectively that
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means that they can slowly say well you have to register your podcast that's all you know oh you just
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have to provide a brief annual report each year don't worry about it just take you two minutes you know
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fill it out how many podcasts did you do and then it's like well you have to report on um what what
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are the topics that you addressed and then it's like we have to report you know do you have enough
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canadian content aboriginal content lgbtq content right and you know this is how it goes right it starts out
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slow and innocent um but this can happen the the power is there now for the crtc and they are already
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with the algorithms uh the u.s has commented on how this is a problem that the algorithms are pushing
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what the crtc wants as canadian content to the forefront and american stuff is less and that's
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not a free internet you know people should just well out of the gate we we get our news through
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facebook and you know all of these youtube places that are now stopped up so it's really done nothing for
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canadians getting the information that they want i don't know that it's anything i provided anything
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to the pocketbook of canadians in production of media or news but it certainly has done that
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well that was followed up with the online news act which was bill c18 that was also 2023
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and the goal there the idea was that that google and facebook are
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uh you know spreading news with the links right but they're not paying for it that's unfair and
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that's unjust so they passed c18 the online news act so meta including facebook said no we're not
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doing that at all so now you can't forward a news story via facebook that's wild and then google did
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kind of cooperate they've got i think it's 100 million a year i'm not sure the number but there's
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a special slush fund created but that only benefits government approved with the journalist outlets that
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government likes right um which are the ones getting government funding which is you know the global and
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the ctv and and most most of these so-called legacy media or establishment media right yeah and that has uh you
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know it's so interesting because i think that that's done us some good paul because it puts
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us through in places where there's gaps which is fine but it's not doing anything for the pocketbook
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and frankly we're discussing topics that are prevalent to the news that should be arriving
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through those platforms anyway just by the nature of us getting the information that we need not just
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from the outlets that get approved because it's not easy to get approved as an outlet as we have found
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no many times so now there's more so that's not where it stops yeah those two are law already
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in my view they should both be repealed which would not be if a government a government any government
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wanted to repeal it that would be pretty not that hard to do you use your majority in parliament
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repeal it i think they should go further and abolish the crtc i don't know what purpose it serves in in
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a an internet age where you can get thousands if not millions of different podcasts and websites and
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like what you know why do we need some regulatory body that's going to we're in an environment where
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broadcasters are handing back licenses because they can't make work of them so yeah the crtc aside from
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dealing with uh you know what cell phone monopolies can take our money it's kind of tough to see what they
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actually do yeah at this moment it's it's just it's a power trip for bureaucrats and politicians to
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i guess make themselves feel useful or important or i think it comes with decent paychecks to be
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honest with you john that too and so now we're headed down the tubes toward uh two or three other pieces
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of legislation that could even be a bit more damaging well there yeah the the ones before parliament
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currently so you have c2 c8 c9 c2 is the strong borders act which in my opinion should be called
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the strong surveillance act it this is what the government they add in a whole bunch of stuff
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right so you have the strong borders act c2 parts of it parts of it do pertain to the borders and
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immigration policy and refugee policy then you have other stuff like the a creation of a new
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authorized access to information act which will give new powers to federal government officials
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to conduct warrantless searches on computers and cell phones and to uh demand subscriber data from
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larger companies like rogers or bell or tell us whatever uh so there's a whole bunch of you know
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criminalizing cash uh in amounts over 10 000 um authorizing canada post to open letter mail
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all this stuff has nothing to do with borders but very violating of civil liberties now fortunately c2
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the government the federal government seems to put it on the back burner okay but really bad uh what do
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you think the general purpose of that is i mean if it's not border security why why are we why are we
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chasing laws like this i think it's a battle that's been raging on for hundreds of years and will
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continue to rage on it's a battle between freedom and tyranny and there are people with and let's just
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assume they have good intentions but there are people who they don't like the free society they
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don't like it when you know you and i and everybody else we lead our own lives we make our own decisions
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it's like no they've got a project uh that everybody has to get on board with and so whether it's a
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theocracy uh like in iran and saudi arabia you got to get on board with islam you can't publicly
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criticize islam you'll be in jail or worse uh it could be a fascist thing like mussolini's italy it
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could be national socialist like in germany uh the the look of the comparisons that are being made
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yeah yeah well you know it's interesting because you know you bring that up john and i was before
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the show i was kind of looking at the uh justice center for constitutional freedom so that's not for
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profit uh you guys started around 2010. registered charity since 2010. yeah yeah so you know the genesis
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of that i thought to myself that's terrific and i lived in the states for 12 years so you know some
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of the things that you're talking about you know uh taking a bill and adding pieces onto a bill and
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doing things very american like these concepts are things that americans do all the time like
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when i was there quite frankly you'd be reading an agricultural bill and all of a sudden you'd see a
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gaming section and next thing you know there were 10 casinos in the state right you'd be like
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how did the agricultural bill get tied to the gaming bill and but it was just things that they were
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moving and they were cutting deals with each other to pass things and they were being added to bills to
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pass them through what was the genesis so take me back for a minute so you know when the group started
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and i assume you all had the same kind of feelings as you just said you know about tyranny and and and
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the way this was going what in 2010 kind of was the the the turning point where you guys got together
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and said we're going to put this together we got to stop this and we got to challenge this because
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you know that's a tough thing to do and i i really commend you guys because in canada
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you don't see as much of that i think we have a group uh in ontario that does a similar thing
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constitutional freedom group it's a different group um and but but how did it start well in in the early
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days of the justice center most of our work was defending campus free speech and at that time so
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around 2010 the the only group the the only group that was kind of a target of censorship was the
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campus pro-life groups and you know they're coming out with a message that a lot of people
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find offensive and and don't want to hear it don't want to see it whatever and um so you know we sued the
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university of calgary they they threatened to expel these pro-life students simply for peacefully you know
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there's no violence and they didn't set up an overnight tent city and there wasn't physical
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obstruction and it just but peaceful expression on campus um they were threatened with expulsion
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they were found guilty of non-academic misconduct they were not expelled but they were still found
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guilty so we sued the university of calgary and ultimately we got a court ruling against them
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and the court said that's not reasonable to have these disciplinary proceedings against these students
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for peacefully expressing their opinion on campus uh we had another court case against the university
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of alberta which got really clever by saying we allow all speech on campus except uh the pro-life
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group if you want to put up a display you have to pay seventeen thousand five hundred dollars for
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security fee which of course means it's effectively censorship because what how how could a student group
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come up with seventeen thousand five hundred dollars and the threat to safety and security
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was coming from people with the opposing viewpoint that were going to be disruptive and obstruction and
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you know get within six inches of your face and so it's like well so actually punishing the pro-life
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group with the security fee when the wrongdoing was or potential wrongdoing is coming from people that
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don't want to debate and they don't want to set up their own display but they want to like physically
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obstruct blockade shut down you know the types of people that pull a fire alarm shout down a speaker
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and the university panders to those people and they get what they want because they threaten to
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create a fuss and then the university gets scared and they punish rather than upholding free speech
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they punish the people that want to express their views by saying well there's a threat to safety and
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security so you have to come up with seventeen thousand five hundred dollars if you want to
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peacefully express your views on campus so it sounds like different iterations of this are the same
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methodology you're going to fight at every level municipally at the university level or even at the
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federal level it sounds like the same process you would have to go through by saying look it's just
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frankly unfair well the council culture has grown things have gotten worse uh you know the uh it's
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just so commonplace now where the um you know a venue the moment that there's somebody that's upset or
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offended it's you know a lot of venues will back down some won't so it's uh it's a deterioration and it
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is analogous unfortunately to what we saw 90 years ago in germany we had the gradual decline and
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breakdown of democracy and the free society and that was preceded by um thugs disrupting other people's
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meetings so the communists had their red shirts same thing same thing you know bust up bang up other
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political parties would just show up there and you know they wouldn't show up with guns and kill people
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but they kind of disrupt yeah rough people up you know throw a few punches toss a few chairs around
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and disrupt the the meetings of other parties and then the national socialists they said well we got
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to we got to protect ourselves against these terrible communists so we're going to create our brown shirts
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and they were doing the same thing then and going around disrupting shutting down other people's
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meetings so you had this council culture uh ours in canada 90 years later is a little bit
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less thuggish but it's the same idea same idea same method same method yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna
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prevent you from having your event because i'm gonna show up scream shout yell make noise pull a fire
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alarm well it's interesting and you talk you know constitutional freedoms you know it's in your name
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and you know again i mentioned to you i lived i lived in the u.s for 12 years so it's very interesting
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to watch some differences and born here uh came back and it's it's interesting canadians don't
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really even think of their constitutional freedom and what they are so can we talk a little bit about
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that and kind of the differences you see around the world because it's interesting i'm watching what's
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happening right now in the uk and then the us and i'm looking i'm thinking okay why canadians are having
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the same challenges but we don't focus on it for some reason and is that just because we're too busy
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too small i think it's a gradual transformation of the country in the past uh 50 60 years starting with
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pierre elliott trudeau i'm told by people uh people like ted byfield who's passed away a few years ago but
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uh older canadians said that that throughout the 40s 50s 60s uh right into the end of the 60s we were
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very proudly british north america and we were very british and we had the royal navy and the royal air
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force and and uh um and pierre elliott trudeau disliked that and got us off on the you know well
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we're not british but we're also but we're not american and we're kind of anti-american and yeah
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it it's uh here we are 50 years later and and there is still some canadian identity uh but it's not
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um i think you put 10 canadians in a room and ask them what canadian identity was all about you
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probably get 10 different answers oh yeah and what's their constitutional freedoms would they know
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well it used to be uh 50 or 60 years ago people just kind of understood as part of our british heritage
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that we had freedom of speech religion association freedom of conscience you know before before uh pierre
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trudeau added the charter to our constitution everybody understood that a man is innocent until
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proven guilty you have a right to a fair trial uh you have a right to remain silent so that we don't have
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a situation where police are uh torturing or extracting a confession out of you through
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torture so you have a legal right to not speak when you're criminally charged and the not speaking will
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not be used against you um and we this was all part of the fabric of our culture and i think but hey john
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can i ask you something was that and you know it's interesting because you're a historian obviously you
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understand the the background to it was that a uh let's call it was that because it's part of uk
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parliamentary legal process so that's why and we followed from that or was it was it specifically
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written it was just part of our culture just part of our that's what i thought right it was like this
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whole idea that that like before that so the chart right now the canadian charter of rights and
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freedoms or the charter for short sets out in writing that an accused person has the right to
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be presumed innocent until proven guilty you have the right to counsel you have the right to a fair
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trial before an independent and impartial tribunal blah blah blah these are spelled out before 1982
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they were not spelled out and yet they were honored the police understood the crown prosecutors
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understood the lawyers understood the judges understood that you've got a right to a fair trial and
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you have a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt etc so it's just part
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of the culture so what's changed is that like the culture that people today in in 2026 uh there are
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many many canadians i would say especially the younger ones but but canadians of all ages they don't
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understand that freedom of expression is vital to democracy yeah you would find people who will tell
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you i i'm in favor of free uh i'm in favor of free speech as long as it's not offensive that's just
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like all right that's crazy right like freedom of speech is worthless and it means nothing if i can't
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go stand on a sidewalk and and say something that you don't want to hear you don't have to stand there
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and listen you can ignore me and walk past me but if i can't go onto a street corner and say something that
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99 of the people disagree with then there's no free speech free speech it's about that it's about
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uh uh unpopular viewpoint that people consider to be wrong and false that you can go and peacefully say
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what other people think is wrong or false right thank goodness for podcasting i think we're getting
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more of that done having said that uh your your organization will actually get out there and represent
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these events these moments where freedoms are being uh i guess impeded if not stomped on how do you guys
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go about that like who does it is it a a group of experts lawyers tell me about the group so we've got
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10 lawyers um we have cases court cases from bc to newfoundland we've got a lawyer in quebec we've
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got a several in ontario uh lawyers in alberta and then for provinces where we don't have a
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full-time staff lawyer um we still run the cases there right like currently we don't have uh staff
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lawyers in uh british columbia or saskatchewan but we take on cases in bc and saskatchewan that are done
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by the alberta or ontario or whatever you know somebody so for example um we're representing a lady in bc
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who was told by her school board uh or by her school that she was not allowed to host an international
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student in a student exchange program which she had done previously and everything had been fine
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because she had publicly criticized the uh soji sexual orientation gender identity curriculum and
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it said that she disagreed with the curriculum it just stated her opinions and the school said oh well
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you're not eligible to um you're not eligible to host an international student what was her what
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was their justification of that well she's a bad person because she's publicly they didn't say that
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we're i'm paraphrasing okay but but it's like if you criticize soji the sexual orientation gender identity
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if you which is in all the bc schools and there's variations of it probably all across canada if you
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criticize soji you're a bad person because a good person will support soji and if you disagree with
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soji you're a bad person you're not worthy of hosting an international student i was like the supreme
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court of canada said trinity western university is not worthy of being allowed to have a law school
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because they have uh an evangelical christian community covenant that says no sex outside of
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marriage and it's it's this is the woke tyranny that is growing still i mean it's a lot i see
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growing pushback as well it's uh it's wild well in the states you know we did a show member at the
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beginning when we started the podcasting network basically uh about what the us is doing right now
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on this front and it has to do with a lot about you know wokeness is is going away but you know again
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having spent time living in the us and spent time and growing up in canada americans really you know
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that debate around freedom of speech and and their rights and you know uh their charter per se you
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know they spend a lot of time on it and and they protect it we don't talk about it a lot which is which
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is a shame and i think it's coming to the forefront now which you know what you guys are doing is is
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amazing because that debate has to happen and i think it you know i was just saying i'm glad we
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met because i don't think that debate happens enough i think we're just we're all kind of saying
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oh well you know it'll work itself out yeah nobody's ever going to really let that happen yeah it's a
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perverse it's a twisting of a good thing so we have politeness which is a good thing right yeah so
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you know i try to uh we all uh all of us strive to not offend people unnecessarily right i'm not
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going to say something bad about your wife or your mother or your kids or whatever right because so
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like and it's good it's good to be polite well to be part of society we have to have interdiplomacy
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yeah so so so this this niceness and diplomacy and you know our mother said if you can't say
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something nice don't say anything at all which is a good maximum to to live by but like not in
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an absolute black and white every circumstance but as as a starting point you know if you can't say
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something nice don't say so these are all good things and it's good to be polite and it's good to
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be nice however if you take that to an extreme then it gets into well you can't say you're not
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allowed to say something that that i that i disagree with because if i disagree with it
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i'm offended and you're offending me and when you say something that i disagree with you're
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offensive and you shouldn't be so offensive offensive and then like this is how it it breaks
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down which is unfortunate but it's the twisting of a good thing right so politeness and respect
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uh diplomacy are good things but then they get twisted into we can't have an honest debate anymore
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about you know lockdowns or mandatory vaccination policies or abortion or euthanasia or you know men
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getting transferred into women's prisons which is one of our court cases or on and on and on like
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you know we can't debate this anymore because somebody says that they feel offended but that
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politeness was what got us to solutions often that regular politeness that general politeness of okay
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i heard your side of it john hear me out and you actually listening listened yeah okay so
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that is authentic politeness where you listen to another viewpoint yeah you don't just uh you know
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you got to shut up right now because you're saying something i disagree with at that moment you might
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even say to me well all right i can see how you would see that that perspective hmm that's when the
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solution begins between us understanding the other person's perspective even if it's wrong even if you've
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hated it up to that point now i say this as an obvious thing but there you are across the country
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these guys are fighting battles on this wokeness issue which paul points out is this is real the
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entertainment business has lost over a trillion dollars in the u.s market over wokeness and audiences
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rejecting the content they're putting out there because it makes no sense to their humanity or to
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their sensibilities but it was pushed down the throats of the system of broadcasts and networks and
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the movie systems and even music and now they find themselves in a lost position because they followed
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that route well they if it's private companies they will you know the the market will uh cause them to
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change their ways here in can we're forced to spend taxpayers pay four million dollars every day
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365 days a year to the cbc so 1.55 billion dollars and i i just had a column in the western standard uh
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earlier today about how um the federal court of appeal ruled uh upheld a lower court ruling that trudeau
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violated the conditions in terms of the emergencies act the emergencies act required
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a serious threat to sovereignty health and safety ordinary law enforcement yeah can't work uh the
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justice center was involved in that case we provided lawyers for uh for canadians at the trial level
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and so we won that trial we got that declaration uh that that uh the trudeau and federal cabinet acted
00:27:22.400
illegally and then two years later we got this federal court of appeal ruling so the cbc comes out with
00:27:27.920
a story and says um neo-nazi group linked to freedom convoy i said what is this and so it was a french
00:27:38.640
language um and they they said there was a trial of this guy in ontario who was accused of being involved
00:27:47.440
with a terrorist group wasn't accused of terrorist acts that that harm people but but it's a crime to
00:27:54.320
be involved in a terrorist group okay and and then there's a witness who said that the there was a
00:27:59.920
camera that was used with this group in 2018 to film some of their crazy activities in the woods and the
00:28:06.800
same camera was in ottawa in february 2022 taking shots of freedom convoy okay so it has a camera that was
00:28:15.760
in two different locations at two different points in time and yet they come out and say this proves that
00:28:22.320
the the the headline says freedom convoy linked to neo-nazis that's the headline right so they're
00:28:30.000
smearing freedom convoy with with our money with our tax dollars and and the inaccuracy of which they
00:28:39.040
reported is um is not noted actually by anybody because everybody's on that same everybody in that
00:28:47.680
world in the cbc world we'll just back that up we'll back that up and they will most people or sorry
00:28:53.920
many people often read only the headlines i know i know i do that right like we're busy and there's a
00:28:58.480
gazillion stories right so so the headline says uh neo-nazi group atomwaffen division linked to uh freedom
00:29:11.280
convoy that's the headline right and most people will see the headline they won't read the story and this
00:29:16.880
is the cbc smearing freedom convoy um and the cbc will also they'll they'll i promise that we'll
00:29:24.960
title this one freedom fighting lawyer looks out for your rights okay does that sound fair well
00:29:31.120
but it's interesting because you know the emergency act which um that ruling to me was amazing you know
00:29:37.360
it could still it's still going to go to the prime minister's desk to maybe go to the supreme court i think
00:29:42.640
that's where it sits now let's see where he he's not likely to do that persuade them to hear supreme
00:29:48.640
court's got a two-step sorry to interrupt yeah they got a two-step process first you have to ask the
00:29:52.720
court would you please hear this appeal and you have to persuade the supreme court that there is a very
00:29:58.800
important legal doctrine uh that is in need of clarification because the the waters are muddied
00:30:05.840
and diluted and it's not clear and you know because the let's say the bc and saskatchewan
00:30:12.240
courts of appeal ruled one way on an issue and the alberta and quebec courts ruled the opposite way
00:30:18.480
and then you go to the supreme court and say look we've got this really important legal doctrine we
00:30:21.760
need clarity right that's how you get into the supreme court so i think the federal government would
00:30:26.480
have an uphill fight going to the supreme court and saying oh there's an important national doctrine that
00:30:33.200
is lacking in clarity right it's pretty clear yeah because yeah and on top of just the emergency act
00:30:40.400
part of it there's a bunch of search and seizure issues that actually come into play with that also
00:30:44.800
right the fact that uh they were freezing bank accounts you know freezing funds and they were
00:30:50.080
monitoring the crowd yeah exactly there was there's a whole host of other issues that kind of it's it's
00:30:55.600
multi-tiered again but you know these conversations i find it interesting again drawing sort of from around
00:31:02.640
the world my experience lived in a number of places again in canada when i came back we don't talk about
00:31:08.720
them we don't debate them and we don't um you probably know them from a legal perspective but
00:31:15.120
because the media is not talking about and putting them in and both sides of the media aren't putting
00:31:19.120
them in we don't have fulsome debate which is a shame and we should be and those are people who fight
00:31:23.920
against it you know like shame on them because if if a case for example the emergency act is one
00:31:30.160
we should look at it we should say how do we not do that again therefore we take that off the table
00:31:36.240
so your your point about polite and and uh being a polite society it has to be based on a set of uh
00:31:43.680
premise uh legal background that we all follow and then then we can now if that changes down the road
00:31:50.400
it should be put up for debate there should be a legal challenge and then it should be decided and then we
00:31:54.480
should move forward i think that's probably what we're missing right now so i read that again when
00:31:59.360
it was funny because we were having this debate on the constitution and freedoms for a while and we
00:32:05.280
said we'd like to find someone and it's interesting we found each other through this trip but it was
00:32:12.080
amazing we were having a hard time finding someone who was really open to talk about it and and um that's
00:32:18.080
the truth we tried to find a class action specialist people that would actually understand that you know
00:32:24.720
and to be connected actually is very fortuitous because a lot of the things that we're talking
00:32:29.680
about on a daily basis when it comes to politics freedom falls into it in a big way yeah freedom of
00:32:36.800
speech freedom of movement freedom of you know expression uh this is what our soldiers fought to defend
00:32:45.600
you know particularly in world war ii when we were fighting the national socialist germany fascist italy imperial
00:32:53.440
japan these were dictatorial uh regimes that were oppressive and tyrannical and expansionist
00:33:01.760
and so we were fighting to defend ourselves you know as a country but it was also the ideals of
00:33:10.400
parliamentary democracy freedom of speech freedom of religion freedom from tyranny and oppression that
00:33:16.880
that we have a free society that was what uh united uh britain canada the united states and other
00:33:23.760
countries to to fight and thankfully win against the national socialists and and the fascists that
00:33:32.240
were uh in charge in in germany and italy so the freedom is is really important but what's happened
00:33:39.200
uh more recently is that it's not really threatened by an external enemy i mean you got communist china
0.55
00:33:46.720
is a pretty bad regime but you know i don't think people are scared that that they're going to send
00:33:52.160
in the army and and attack us militarily right so now yeah it it maybe it's it's easier to fight for
00:34:02.400
freedom when the people against it are so obviously the enemies like adolf hitler and mussolini or the
00:34:10.160
enemies of freedom right it it kind of crystallizes it for the mind like now we don't really have an
00:34:15.520
external enemy that's threatening our freedom it's just from within like this woke ideology that you're
00:34:20.800
not allowed to say you know uh you can't speak honestly about the whole transgender stuff you know
00:34:27.280
because now in ontario and manitoba you could actually get in trouble for misgendering is a
00:34:33.920
violation of the human rights code which applies to speech uh you could even even in alberta you could
00:34:39.680
get a complaint filed against you i'm not aware of that having happened but if you uh miss misgender
1.00
00:34:46.240
somebody right right uh that you could have a human rights complaint filed against you yeah you know i
00:34:53.360
think that that's okay so i'll get to the obvious question in a minute we left one of the impending
00:34:58.240
laws off the discussion i think what's the last one that's before our government right now i think
00:35:04.000
there's two is there two more i think there's two more yeah so yeah so for a week so can you imagine
00:35:10.560
well there's six bills so so the the the c11 online streaming act gave the crtc uh legal authority over
00:35:19.200
the internet and and canadian podcasts and websites the c18 online news act uh has taken away from us
0.65
00:35:27.760
the ability to forward it to use facebook to forward news to each other c2 is the strong borders act
00:35:35.360
which has a bunch of bad provisions but the government's put it on the back burner c8 is the
00:35:40.480
cyber security act which would give federal cabinet ministers the power to kick individual canadians off
00:35:47.200
the internet if the cabinet minister decided that somebody was a threat to the national cyber
00:35:55.200
infrastructure which is very broadly worded they need to amend it to clarify that it can't be used
00:36:00.320
uh in respect of boy oh boy i hope that one gets thrown out for obvious reasons okay and then we got c9
00:36:07.200
which is the combating hate act which would remove a current requirement uh for a hate speech prosecution
00:36:15.440
to move ahead it needs the permission of the attorney general or the justice minister uh it would get
00:36:23.200
rid of that so it would take us towards becoming more like the united kingdom where you got 30 people
00:36:27.600
charged uh with you know over social media commentary they say we got too much immigration or the wrong kind
00:36:34.000
of immigration and you get a knock on your door and the police officers there so uh c9 is called the
00:36:40.400
combating hate act very clever that's the one where you can't be a comedian forget about it there can't
00:36:46.480
be any comedians in the uk anymore no it's it's i i spent some time in the uk this summer and uh it's
00:36:52.880
palpable the fear among the comedy community uh to really say anything of any magnitude is you know
00:37:02.240
to be sardonic or sarcastic or to hold a mirror up to ourselves you have to say some things
00:37:08.000
and there's this guy got in trouble for saying i was i was assigned mammal at birth but now i identify
00:37:14.960
as fish i'm in trouble for that that's okay i identify as fish i was assigned mammal at birth
00:37:24.400
assigned yeah yeah but now i really identify as fish no you can't make a joke i mean uh there is very
00:37:31.200
serious um and even online i mean that's the thing is that uh now we're being threatened with our
00:37:37.520
history uh over time so if i said something to you uh eight months ago and my opinion has changed and
00:37:45.040
you and i have made up and we've even shared a dialogue that's more positive i they can still
00:37:51.600
charge me based on the comments that were made previously yeah yeah so though so that's c9 um i've
00:37:58.880
heard some rumblings that the government's backing down on that now the the last one the sixth one is
00:38:04.960
i think the scare the scariest of all unless the online harms act it was brought in two years ago
00:38:11.120
as bill c63 it was brought in early 2024 it died thankfully with the april 2025 election right
00:38:21.200
the federal government keeps saying they're going to bring it back so c63 a huge long bill but a few
00:38:28.480
items i'll try to summarize federal cabinet gets powers to pass internet censorship regulations
00:38:37.520
digital safety commission created to enforce regulations massive multi-million dollar fines
00:38:45.280
for companies that violate these regulations these regulations are not subject to parliamentary scrutiny
00:38:53.600
the federal cabinet makes them right so so that if if the online harms act passes into law that law says
00:38:59.680
that the cabinet without further scrutiny or input from cabinet can pass censorship regulations to censor
00:39:05.360
the internet then another provision um a judge can place you under house arrest order you to obey a curfew
00:39:16.320
put you into an ankle bracelet based on a fear of your neighbor that you might commit a speech crime in
00:39:22.640
future so we're talking about minority report the movie we're talking about canadians who have not been
00:39:28.240
charged with any criminal offense they have not been found guilty of any offense and yet the judge would have
00:39:34.160
the power to place them under house arrest and order them to refrain from communicating
00:39:39.760
and so on based on somebody fearing that they might commit a speech crime in future and then to be able
00:39:47.120
and then to be able to represent themselves from their home in an ankle bracelet with no ability to reach
00:39:52.720
the world they're basically imprisoned you know yeah this is it's just it's shocking like it sounds too
00:40:01.600
evil to be true but it it's it's actually in so this is what they want to bring back right so the
00:40:07.200
federal cabinet can regulate uh the internet digital safety commission with hundreds of new
00:40:14.960
bureaucrats hired can enforce it uh judges can impose conditions on on canadians freedom who have not been
00:40:24.640
charged with or convicted of any criminal quote offense canadian human rights commission gets new
00:40:29.520
powers to prosecute canadians over non-criminal discriminatory speech
00:40:36.240
with fines up to fifty thousand dollars payable to government twenty thousand dollars payable to
00:40:42.240
complainants who could be anonymous i don't know what they do with so if i complain on you
00:40:47.280
i get 20k pretend that's the upper limit i have a nice drive home thinking about that yeah well you
00:40:53.680
know maybe hey maybe maybe i'll only be ordered to pay you you know one thousand dollars because my
00:40:58.960
my you know speech was a little bit discriminatory and not overly discriminatory well i'm going to
00:41:05.280
get what i can yeah uh and you know that's the problem in the end is it turns everybody into these
00:41:10.240
weird kind of speech snitches minority report is a really good example of of this so okay now so
1.00
00:41:17.360
that's the sixth and final bill that's the online harms act has not been reintroduced the federal
00:41:22.560
government keeps on saying that they're going to re reintroduce the same legislation so the justice
00:41:30.080
center on on our website we've got a letter writing campaign where people can click click click click
00:41:35.440
and send a letter to their own mp to say don't bring back the online harms act okay we're going to make
00:41:41.120
sure that that link is available in the description and that was really that was my final question really
00:41:46.240
paul was okay here we are there has to be a route to get us out of this there has to be a road map that
00:41:52.320
that gets us out what is that and it sounds to me like it's taking action letting the government know
00:41:59.280
and actually putting your putting your name on something that says i as a canadian don't want
00:42:05.600
this i don't want these restrictions i don't understand this law i refuse to just let it happen
00:42:10.800
absolutely the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing
00:42:16.480
and so when citizens are engaged uh in the democratic process and we've seen this with bill c2 the
00:42:22.880
strong borders act there are so many things in there violations of privacy the surveillance state uh you
00:42:29.280
know civil liberties groups were against it there was a massive outcry and the government said you know
00:42:36.240
okay that hasn't been withdrawn but it's it's been put on the back burner in fact what the federal
00:42:41.360
government did was they took they took out the parts of the strong borders act they were actually
00:42:46.400
about immigration and refugees created a new bill and got that bill passed i don't know if it's passed
00:42:53.600
yet or not but you know and and all this other stuff about criminalizing the use of cash and the
00:42:59.760
surveillance states and the authorized access to information act and canada post can open your letter
00:43:04.800
mail all that stuff has been put on the back burner why because canadians contacted their mps and said
00:43:11.040
i don't want this anymore so there's your inspiration right there john i'm blown away first of all i'm
00:43:16.000
glad that we met you second of all thank you you seem to be the the check that in the balance needs to be
00:43:22.160
there uh that you know sadly that it has to be but that you're doing this for canadians and that
00:43:28.000
your organization is so widespread uh blows my mind actually yeah no it doesn't i i again i really
00:43:34.480
appreciate all the work you do and uh you know the uh the more we talk about it i feel the more people
00:43:42.640
can get educated and have the debate and that's what's missing in our unfortunately in canada right
00:43:48.000
well credit credit goes to the generous donors right we're next month in february we are going to mail out
00:43:54.240
uh about 9 500 official tax receipts to the 9 500 canadians who donated to us in 2025 right so we
00:44:04.400
issued the tax receipts yeah and then it all those donations from those nine and a half thousand people
00:44:10.640
they uh pay for the staff lawyers the paralegals uh the communication staff the you know the researchers
00:44:18.640
uh you know we're we're going to be working hard in 2026 as well wow fantastic i mean we definitely are
00:44:27.520
blown away uh if people wanted to reach out to you where's the best way for them to do that so website
00:44:33.760
is www.jccf.ca so jccf is justice center constitutional freedoms jccf.ca and you can sign up for a newsletter
00:44:45.920
that we send out only once or twice a month not daily or weekly but if you sign up for a newsletter
00:44:51.760
you'll hear from us once or twice a month uh updating on our cases and papers and projects
00:44:57.600
and whatnot and uh yeah all of the other all of our court cases and everything's on on the website
00:45:03.520
you know what i would love to do paul is to the one of these cases comes up in the future and we just
00:45:07.840
follow it from the beginning yeah through the process and watch it uh watch it unfold through the uh
00:45:13.840
in the hands of john and his group uh thanks so much for joining us we really appreciate it thanks
00:45:19.440
thanks for having me on your show it's an honor let's get you back what do you say yes okay thank
00:45:23.600
you so much uh and thank you so much for joining us don't forget subscribe tell a friend and uh for
00:45:28.800
goodness sake visit tpl.ca and don't forget you are the gas in the tank that keeps us moving thanks so much