Western Standard - Christine Van Geyn discusses threats to Canadian civil liberties

00:00:00.000 Hello everybody, this is Matthew Horward reporting live from the Canada Strong and Free Networking

00:00:04.560 Conference. I'm here with Christine Van Gein. She is the Litigation Director for the Canadian

00:00:09.360 Constitutional Foundation, a charity that is dedicated to civil liberties issues. Christine,

00:00:14.160 thank you for coming on the show with me today. Thanks for having me on. I imagine you've been

00:00:18.160 very busy over the past couple two years. Lots of civil liberties issues have been happening.

00:00:23.280 Could you talk a little bit about the work that you've been doing since the pandemic began?

00:00:27.200 Yeah, so I started this job two years ago when COVID had just sort of started and I did not know

00:00:34.320 we would, when I accepted the job offer, that we would be in the middle of a civil liberties crisis

00:00:39.760 in Canada. I think one of the big issues that people should be aware of is that the past two

00:00:45.120 years have done incredible damage to our culture of civil liberties in Canada and in order to protect

00:00:51.520 our freedoms, people need to better understand them. I think right now there's a big misunderstanding

00:00:55.680 of how our constitution works, how our fundamental freedoms work. So that is a big initiative that

00:01:00.880 we have at the CCF. We have an education, public education project. You can learn about it at the

00:01:06.160 ccf.ca slash learn. It's a free online course taught by Canada's leading scholars in constitutional law.

00:01:12.560 But in terms of cases, we have been incredibly busy, extremely busy over the last two years. So we've done

00:01:19.680 cases related to the federal quarantine hotel program, which was an absolute boondoggle, required

00:01:25.440 people to stay in these extremely expensive hotels when they returned to Canada, constitutionally

00:01:32.240 protected right to enter Canada. So we challenged that. We also have been challenging the vaccine

00:01:38.560 passport program in British Columbia. We were just in court about two weeks ago on a case related to that.

00:01:43.680 British Columbia has the worst vaccine passport program in Canada. And although it has been 1.00

00:01:49.760 repealed now, the government has itself said that it may come back in the fall during the winter

00:01:55.600 respiratory season. So basically, the problem in British Columbia is that their policy has no medical

00:02:02.400 exemptions whatsoever in practice. Even people who have a condition like pericarditis induced from the

00:02:09.680 first dose of a vaccine. And I will say I'm pro vaccination. I think people should speak to their

00:02:14.320 doctors about vaccination. But to tell a teenage girl like our plaintiff in that case that in order 0.98

00:02:22.480 to be accommodated under the vaccine passport program, she needs to apply to the government

00:02:27.920 every time she wants to do anything on an activity by activity basis, that is completely unreasonable.

00:02:33.760 To create a closed list where rare and unusual reactions or medical conditions won't be accommodated

00:02:40.560 by the government. That's a clear on its face discriminatory policy. So we challenge that in

00:02:47.200 court. We're looking forward to a ruling on that sometime soon. And of course, we have a major case

00:02:52.240 going on right now at the federal court, a judicial review of the Trudeau government's decision to invoke

00:02:59.520 the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy. They invoked extraordinary legislation when

00:03:05.680 the statutory criteria for that legislation was not met. Legislation that allowed them to create new

00:03:11.840 criminal laws to freeze bank accounts and had a huge, huge implications for Canadian civil rights. They

00:03:22.800 they did this, we're challenging it, but they're now telling us that they don't have to tell us why.

00:03:28.400 That there are reasons for invoking this extraordinary legislation is top secret. So we're challenging

00:03:34.560 that as well. We're trying to obtain access to the cabinet records, the cabinet minutes that provide

00:03:40.720 this explanation. So those are some of our more recent cases, but we have a lot more than that.

00:03:47.200 Amazing, very busy. And now yesterday you were at the conference talking about financial chill.

00:03:52.320 Could you talk a little bit about that? It's as a result of the Emergencies Act and its impact on

00:03:56.880 charities, correct? Yeah, so I've written about this issue in the National Post. You can check out my

00:04:02.480 op-ed there. It's under my name, Christine Van Gein. Basically, after the Emergencies Act was invoked

00:04:08.800 and we announced a legal challenge, we tried to raise money to pay for our lawyer. It's a very expensive

00:04:13.680 challenge. It's going to cost us about a hundred thousand dollars, probably more actually given that

00:04:18.000 the government were now fighting over access to these documents. So we tried to raise some money and

00:04:23.680 the response that we got from people was shocking. A huge number of people said, I would love to donate

00:04:30.800 to this cause, but I'm afraid of my bank account being frozen. And really a huge number of people.

00:04:36.960 And I've talked to people across the not-for-profit and charitable world. I had friends at other

00:04:41.200 charities or not-for-profits who are actually here at the conference today who've experienced a similar

00:04:45.920 issue, who had donors saying like, I want to, I want to suspend my donations because I'm afraid

00:04:51.760 if the government doesn't like your cause, they could freeze my assets. This, this is not a

00:04:56.800 realistic concern. People don't need to be afraid of this happening. We're a registered charity. The

00:05:03.600 registered not-for-profit charity world is, is regulated in Canada in a way that people don't

00:05:09.360 need to be concerned about this happening. But on the same hand, I do understand where the concern is

00:05:15.040 coming from. When the emergencies act was invoked, there was so much uncertainty about how the

00:05:20.800 government was doing this, about how it seemed like people who were only peripherally involved

00:05:26.160 in the freedom convoy, were saying that their accounts were being frozen. It created a lot of

00:05:31.840 fear and panic among a lot of the donor base for charities, not just in the, you know, right of center

00:05:38.080 world. But I had people who were working for charities related to Ukraine, who were expressing this

00:05:42.960 concern. People who wanted to, to donate to help victims of war in Ukraine, they, they were afraid

00:05:50.240 to make a donation because they said, what if the government doesn't agree with this particular

00:05:54.240 charity? Is my account going to be frozen? It's a real concern that people have. I don't think it's

00:06:00.960 a realistic concern, but I understand why people have it.

00:06:03.600 Yeah, just one more consequence of the emergencies act. Now switching to digital IDs, there's been

00:06:08.800 talk about implementing them. Italy has a pilot project for that. A couple of provinces have

00:06:14.160 talked about implementing systems such as that. Could you talk about your concerns about a lot of

00:06:17.440 people think that it would result in more control and more and less freedom for people. But do you agree

00:06:22.320 with those concerns? If you, I'm not sure what you mean by digital IDs specifically, but you know,

00:06:29.760 we have a lot of concerns related to informational privacy, what would constitute an informational

00:06:35.760 search. Searches need to be reasonable under our constitution. We don't want to be, I have a lot of

00:06:43.520 civil rights concerns generally about a sort of surveillance society. And I think with a lot of AI

00:06:49.840 technologies, facial recognition technologies, a lot of concerns about governments implementing that.

00:06:55.200 I have a lot of concerns about what the privacy oversights are going to be. So, you know, generally

00:07:01.200 if it was, if it was voluntary, it's not something I would sign up for, for digital ID, but I'd have to

00:07:06.640 see what it looks like. For sure. Could you talk a little bit about euthanasia in Canada and what we

00:07:12.960 could see in the coming years? They've talked about opening up to people with mental health conditions

00:07:17.760 who can't, can't see a better way. Or do you have concerns with euthanasia in Canada? So I'm going to be

00:07:23.600 doing an episode of, I have a television program called Canadian Justice, where we're going to talk

00:07:27.520 about this issue. There's been a lot of reporting recently on how a famous decision on medically

00:07:35.120 assisted dying, it's called the Carter decision has, it seems to be there's this slippery slope

00:07:44.480 right now happening where people who are in mental or financial distress even are applying for medically

00:07:50.480 assisted dying. And I think that it clearly, there clearly need to be better limits on access to a

00:08:02.720 procedure like that. I have my own concerns about access to it just generally and how the Carter

00:08:09.760 decision is written, but, and then that seems to be settled, but clearly I think there should be some

00:08:15.600 limits on when it's available for people in mental distress and offering the mental health supports

00:08:22.000 instead of euthanasia or medically assisted dying seems better alternative. And clearly the financial

00:08:30.640 suffering angle seems to be really bizarre. I've only seen this as reporting, I haven't spoken to any of

00:08:37.600 the individuals who are involved in those applications for medically assisted dying,

00:08:42.000 but, you know, I have a lot of concerns and I think that there could be some legal cases that

00:08:48.880 could arise out of that actually. Absolutely. Could you talk a little bit about Bill C-18 ensuring

00:08:54.240 fair compensation for news media? Michael Geist has spoken a lot about his concerns with the legislation.

00:08:59.760 Do you share those concerns? What are your thoughts on it? So the current federal government,

00:09:05.120 C-18, can you clarify which particular law this is? There have been a whole bunch that were removed

00:09:13.680 and then reintroduced under new bill numbers. And I know there's a lot that has been involved on

00:09:18.240 telecom, on broadcasting and on social media content regulation, and then on regulation for internet

00:09:26.240 harm. So I'm not sure exactly which one. The regulation for internet harms portion of the bill. Okay. Yeah. So,

00:09:31.680 you know, I need to see how it's going to be written, but I definitely have concerns about

00:09:42.880 creating a statutory definition for hate crime. I think that there is an inherent, if that,

00:09:52.560 there's a whole bunch of different pieces of legislation, but there's that one, a statutory

00:09:56.880 definition for hate crime. There's also an issue with the previous iteration of the legislation

00:10:03.040 where the online harms included things like hate crime, which does have a lot of subjective elements.

00:10:08.480 That's part of the problem with having this, you know, statutory definition. Another thing that was

00:10:15.520 problematic about the online harm legislation was that it conflates a whole bunch of different issues

00:10:22.640 that really need to be addressed separately. It combines hate crime as an online harm along with

00:10:28.800 terrorism content, which I think most people would agree is a more reasonable limit on freedom of

00:10:35.360 expression, as well as regulation and criminalization for images of child exploitation, sexual child

00:10:43.360 exploitation, which people commonly call child pornography. It's images of child sexual abuse. And

00:10:51.040 that is clearly a criminal, that and terrorism, those are clearly criminal. They should be treated

00:10:57.120 really in a different way from hate crime, which has a lot of subjective elements. And a lot of people

00:11:03.440 misunderstand what hate speech actually is. And they just kind of say anything that offends me is hate

00:11:11.440 speech. That's, that's, that's not what it is. But the, the definition of a child sexual exploitation is not

00:11:18.720 subjective. It's very clear. So regulating those types of harm differently is really important. And

00:11:24.400 that's not what at least the old version of the bill did. For sure. I'm wondering if you've given any

00:11:29.360 thought to the World Health Organization's pandemic treaty. Leslie Lewis, Conservative candidate,

00:11:34.000 has given a lot of, she's talked a lot about it and the potential for Canada to give away its

00:11:38.800 sovereignty to make public health measures and rules in response to future pandemics. Have you looked

00:11:44.640 into that? Do you share any of those concerns? No, I'm not familiar with that issue at all. Okay, fair

00:11:48.960 enough. I won't press you on that. You can't know it all, right? You know already so much. You saw the

00:11:56.000 Conservative leadership debates last night, correct? Yeah. Yes, I watched. Yeah. Were you particularly

00:12:01.440 impressed by any candidates? Did they speak about these issues that you're, you're so passionate about?

00:12:07.360 You know, I'm not partisan, so I don't really have a horse in this race. My one thing is, I wish that the

00:12:12.400 candidates have been asked directly some questions about civil liberties protections in Canada. In

00:12:19.520 in particular, I'm really passionate about freedom of expression issues. So I wish they had had a really

00:12:25.600 specific question about that issue. But since they weren't asked, I went and tracked down all the

00:12:31.440 candidates myself and I've asked them about their views on Canada's biggest challenges to civil

00:12:37.440 liberties. If you want to hear the answers though, you're gonna have to check it out on my YouTube.

00:12:40.640 It's the Canadian Constitution Foundation on YouTube. You can search it there. I haven't edited it yet,

00:12:45.680 so I don't want to spoil my results by telling you what they all said. Fair enough. Okay, yeah,

00:12:51.200 we'll definitely check it out. Are there any other civil liberties issues in this country that you don't

00:12:56.880 think are getting enough attention that are happening right now or could be happening in the future?

00:13:00.800 I think one issue that's fascinating is a lot of the direct interaction between their citizen and

00:13:08.480 their government often happens at the municipal level. So we had a fascinating case earlier this year

00:13:14.480 where a woman had hung a flag on her house that said F Trudeau. It didn't say F, but you can use your

00:13:22.000 imagination about what it did say. Not fuddle-duddle. No, it was not fuddle-duddle, but it had a maple leaf

00:13:28.880 instead of the letter U. So it was being a little cute, but technically not swearing. But one of the

00:13:37.280 incredible things about a country like Canada is that we can call our political leaders of any political

00:13:45.520 party, whatever names we want. We can be as critical or as mean or as rude as we want when we talk about

00:13:52.560 our political leaders. And that is a really precious freedom that so many people around the world don't have.

00:13:59.600 And we should never take that for granted. I mean, it's not probably the language I would choose to

00:14:06.960 criticize our prime minister or our premier, but it's the language that this woman chose. And her town

00:14:14.720 ordered her to take down that flag, ordered her to take down a flag that expressed a really truly held

00:14:21.520 political view that she has. Because I spoke to her and she really definitely believes this

00:14:26.800 deeply. And we represented her for free. We fought the city and we won. And that flag is still hanging

00:14:36.080 at her house. So these are kind of the big and small issues that we like to take at the Canadian

00:14:42.560 Constitution Foundation. At these municipal levels, it's often really just petty bureaucrats who wanted

00:14:48.880 to tell people how to order their lives. And they can't do that. You know, if they don't like the flag

00:14:55.600 she's hung on her house, if some city hall official doesn't like her flag, they can drive down another 1.00

00:15:01.440 street. But they can't tell her to take it down. Absolutely. Speaking on the issue of flags, the NDP,

00:15:07.440 in response to the Freedom Convoy, they introduced a private member's bill planning to ban symbols of

00:15:12.880 hate such as swastikas, Confederate flags. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that's a

00:15:17.520 reasonable thing to try and ban or that's as a going too far and perhaps setting a slippery slope?

00:15:22.160 Now, obviously, I condemn those symbols. I think those are for sure we all do at the Western

00:15:26.400 Sanders. Those are abhorrent symbols of hate. And I, I, I am disgusted when I see them. I'm

00:15:34.160 really disgusted. But we live in a country where people can express their political views,

00:15:40.880 no matter how abhorrent. And I do not support that legislation. I do not think that that would

00:15:46.080 be a reasonable limit on political expression, even though it's expression I abhor and completely

00:15:53.360 disagree with. But I really strongly believe in freedom of expression. Absolutely. Christine,

00:16:01.040 before we go, anything else you'd like to add about the work that you've been doing or what we can

00:16:04.960 expect to see from you? Just sign up for our email updates at the ccf.ca. And that way, no one will

00:16:12.320 ever miss one of our case announcements or one of an update about our cases. We have updates that go out

00:16:18.240 about all our cases on a regular basis. And we're always having hearings that you can actually, a lot of

00:16:24.320 the time now, thanks to COVID, I guess, watch online, something you couldn't do before. So sort of maybe

00:16:30.720 a silver lining, but sign up for our email updates, the ccf.ca. You can watch, tune in live to some of

00:16:37.040 those hearings and get all our updates. For sure. Well, thank you very much. Christine van Gein,

00:16:41.520 uh, litigation director of the ccf. Great having you on. Thank you. Thank you.

Western Standard - May 06, 2022

Christine Van Geyn discusses threats to Canadian civil liberties

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