Western Standard - May 06, 2022


Christine Van Geyn discusses threats to Canadian civil liberties


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

171.14253

Word Count

2,872

Sentence Count

173

Misogynist Sentences

2

Hate Speech Sentences

1


Summary

Christine Van Gein is the Litigation Director for the Canadian Constitutional Foundation, a charity that is dedicated to civil liberties issues. In this episode, she talks about the challenges the CCF has been fighting over the past two years, including challenges to the quarantine program, the vaccine passport program, and the Emergencies Act.


Transcript

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
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
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
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.