Dave and Corey are back in the newsroom talking about the latest breaking news involving fraud and false work, and celebrating a big day in their own family. Also, the snow has finally stopped falling, but it's not over yet!
00:07:23.940It sucks, it's cold, it's cold, it's snowy, I don't like it.
00:07:25.940It's going to get worse going down to like minus 17 and lots, lots more snow. So, but always remember, we always get more snow in March than any other month.
00:07:35.160Well, I guess if it moisturizes the ground, I'd still rather have rain than this bloody snow, but I don't have to shovel rain.
00:07:42.160Yep, very true. And the hives are looking good?
00:07:44.760They were last weekend. Hopefully they bundled up for this next week and they're ready to get back in action next week.
00:07:51.460Awesome. Looking forward to the honey delivery.
00:07:54.460Yeah, a bit of a crazy morning here, Corey, with all sorts of political stuff going on.
00:07:59.460Leading the website right now is a story that will not surprise really anybody in the least.
00:08:05.460The federal government have found three more contractors, they say, has committed fraud, basically, double timing and false work and stuff like that.
00:08:16.460So, they've referred those three contract cases to the RCMP.
00:08:24.460Pierre Polyev, leader of the opposition, held a caucus meeting this morning where he announced the Tory motion on cutting the gas tax for April 1st will be a non-confidence motion, an economic motion.
00:08:40.460So, that means if the Liberals lose, the government falls and we're into an election.
00:08:49.460Obviously, the NDP not really ready for an election will side with the Liberals and but puts Polyev on good ground because he can now lay the feet of the affordability crisis directly on the NDP Liberal coalition.
00:09:05.460We got some interesting video, Corey, of a couple of women.
00:09:11.460Some people in the newsroom wanted to call them grannies, raging grannies.
00:09:16.460But they were filmed vandalizing a Recall Gondek sign.
00:09:20.460Some video yesterday, and they seem nonplussed at the fact that they were being videoed and are easily identified.
00:09:28.460They changed the sign to respect Gondek instead of Recall Gondek.
00:09:34.460The police were called and we do have a picture of the police on scene.
00:09:38.460They say they're investigating and they'll let us know what happens out of that.
00:09:43.460And there's a Liberal MP called House Feather, a Jewish chap, I believe, who was disgusted at the vote over the NDP motion on the Palestinian stuff on the other night.
00:09:56.460He says he might consider leaving the Liberal Party.
00:09:59.460But, you know, today he showed his colors and said he's going to support the government on the GST motion.
00:10:04.460So I don't really see him going anywhere.
00:13:50.460It's defined subjectively by, you know, whatever, whatever bureaucrats in charge of the prosecution.
00:13:58.460And it also adds a new section to the Criminal Code of Canada, whereby a person can be ordered
00:14:07.460to wear an ankle bracelet and observe a curfew and live under house arrest, give up their legally owned,
00:14:15.460legally acquired firearms, et cetera, based on somebody saying that they fear that that person is going to commit a hate speech crime.
00:14:28.460And then you would be hauled before a provincial court judge.
00:14:32.460And if the judge believes that there's reasonable grounds for that fear, again, we're talking about not something you're doing,
00:14:38.460but a speech crime that you have not even committed, but that you might commit.
00:14:43.460And if the judge feels that you might commit, violate the criminal code, hate speech provisions,
00:14:50.460all of those restrictions being put under house arrest, et cetera, can be placed on a person.
00:14:56.460And if the person doesn't agree with those conditions and abide by them, that person can face up to two years in jail.
00:15:03.460So this is very Orwellian to have a new provision in the criminal code where you can be punished for a crime that you might commit in future.
00:15:12.460Well, yeah, I mean, there's a few things we could cover on this bill, and that's probably the most odious of them all.
00:15:21.460I mean, I imagine the second if that bill passed as it is and if somebody was, you know, essentially restrained on a potential thought crime,
00:15:32.460you know, lawyers such as yourself and others would be in there within seconds to challenge that in the courts.
00:15:39.460It just seems that they've crossed the line too far for even the most liberal of judges to support.
00:15:43.460Well, it's the fear factor and the online harms bill if passed or if passed in its current form or even if passed with some of the worst provisions removed,
00:15:54.460it's going to get most Canadians to self-censor.
00:15:58.460You and I and a number of other people would probably just continue on our merry way and speak our minds.
00:16:03.460But for a lot of other people, if the public advocacy is not your full time job, a lot of other Canadians will fear getting even an anonymous complaint is allowed under the Online Harms Act
00:16:16.460so that you don't have a right to face your accuser or question your accuser or have your lawyer ask questions of your accuser or even know who your accuser is.
00:16:27.460That's a provision allowing for anonymous complaints.
00:16:30.460So you can have somebody in Vancouver that sees something online posted by a woman in Nova Scotia who is making some disparaging remarks about a mosque in Toronto.
00:16:41.460And even if the members of that mosque in Toronto are not offended by the comment, this complaint could go ahead anonymously against this woman in Nova Scotia.
00:16:48.460And then she's at the mercy of a human rights commission that's going to decide subjectively whether or not she said something hateful.
00:16:58.460And if convicted, she could be ordered to pay up to $50,000 to the federal government.
00:17:04.460And in addition to that, pay up to $20,000 to the members of the mosque in Toronto.
00:17:14.460It's even worse than what we had previously with the Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.
00:17:24.460Well, it's good. I was going to bring up Section 13.
00:17:26.460And yes, it was like the commissions overstepped so grossly, so badly about 10, 15 years ago that, you know, Prime Minister of the time Harper later on was able to get Section 13 out of there, which was just too broad.
00:17:40.460And people were getting abused by these commissions. I mean, you don't have, as you said, the remedies that you would in a regular courtroom.
00:17:46.460These things were turning into kangaroo courts. I mean, the former owner of the original Western Standard, Ezra Levant, had published those cartoons in it and was brought before the Human Rights Commission.
00:17:56.460There's no criminal charges, just these commissions. And this bill looks like it's going to empower these commissions back to where they were and maybe even further so.
00:18:05.460As you said, it'll be chilling and we should all be very worried.
00:18:08.460Well, it's important for people to contact their member of parliament.
00:18:13.460You could argue that it's even more important if your member of parliament is Liberal or NDP because they've got the majority to get this through.
00:18:20.460But contrary to what some people think, MPs do listen if they get a lot of phone calls and a lot of emails on an issue and they're worried about their reelection.
00:18:30.460It's going to make for some changes within those two parties because they do have the majority in the House.
00:18:37.460The other thing we're doing to fight back is we have an online petition, which, as of right now, has just shy of 50,000 signatures.
00:18:46.460We're going to look for another 50,000 signatures in the weeks ahead, and those will be delivered to the prime minister's office in Ottawa in April.
00:18:54.460So people can find us at www.jccf, F as in freedom, jccf.ca, and please sign the petition.
00:19:04.460The other really worrisome thing is that this legislation gives powers to the federal cabinet to create censorship regulations that will apply to all social media services in Canada.
00:19:19.460And then there will be the creation of a digital safety commission.
00:19:24.460Watch out for things that have the word safety in them.
00:19:27.460During the French Revolution, it was the Committee for Public Safety that chopped off the heads of thousands of people.
00:19:33.460So we're going to have a digital safety commission to enforce those regulations, and those regulations will be made in secret by the federal cabinet without any input from parliament.
00:19:46.460Yeah, this stuff is just going down the realm of crazy train.
00:19:49.460And this bill, I looked at it, I mean, it has hundreds of pages.
00:19:51.460Unfortunately, it's like an omnibus piece.
00:19:53.460It's got a lot packed in there, most of it bad.
00:19:56.460Another part that I saw was some of the penalties they're proposing are, again, just beyond the pale.
00:20:02.460This bill outright prescribes as much as a life sentence, which we can't even get for murderers quite often in this country, but a life sentence if somebody promotes genocide.
00:20:13.460And we're in the midst of a discussion of, I mean, some people say that if you say that Israel has the right to defend itself, you're supporting genocide.
00:20:20.460Or if you deny that there's bodies buried in Kamloops, you support genocide.
00:20:25.460So by theory, you're putting yourself at risk of a life sentence.
00:20:29.460Again, isn't this the sort of thing that most judges would say, look, we can't apply a sentence this heavy on such a relatively minor offense, if indeed it's an offense?
00:20:40.460Well, currently the criminal code provides for a maximum penalty of five years in jail for publicly advocating for genocide.
00:20:49.460So they want to increase that from a five year maximum to life in prison as the maximum.
00:20:54.460Consider the fact that currently the criminal code for sexually assaulting a minor under the age of 16, the maximum penalty is 14 years in prison.
00:21:06.460So it seems like the federal cabinet thinks that advocating for genocide, warranting potentially life imprisonment is worse than raping a child, which would get you a maximum of 14 years in prison.
00:21:20.460I mean, the priorities are just skewed.
00:21:23.460And something else they did politically, though, I mean, and I noticed they put it at the top of the bill.
00:21:28.460When I started reading the bill, at first it didn't seem quite so bad.
00:21:31.460OK, they're talking about bringing in some more stuff to go after people who were hosting child porn.
00:21:36.460OK, everybody's disgusted with that. I can support going after those perverts and further, you know, going.
00:21:41.460But the problem is, once you get past that, that's where they drop all of the rest of the garbage into this bill.
00:21:47.460Do you think maybe it's possible to clip off the first few pages of this bill and pass it and then just get rid of all the rest?
00:21:54.460Well, these the things that the Online Harms Act claims to address are already criminal.
00:22:01.460So, for example, posting revenge porn online is currently already a criminal code offence.
00:22:08.460Posting an intimate image of somebody without their consent is a criminal offence.
00:22:13.460The willful promotion of hatred is a criminal offence.
00:22:17.460Advocating for genocide is a criminal offence.
00:22:20.460Advocating for violence or terrorism or the violent overthrow of the government of Canada is already a criminal offence.
00:22:28.460Encouraging anybody to to to violate the criminal code is already a criminal offence in and of itself.
00:22:36.460If I tell you, you know, Corey, you should go shoplifting tomorrow and if I was serious about it, I've already committed a crime.
00:22:43.460So this is just adding on a thick layer of vague human rights laws to further chill speech when the the problems which are real are already being addressed by the Criminal Code of Canada.
00:22:58.460Yeah, well, and it takes away from from people committing real crimes.
00:23:01.460I mean, if we're using our resources going after some ding dong who posted something offensive on social media somewhere.
00:23:06.460Meanwhile, we do have some people that might be standing on a street street corner, you know, trying to scream and gather people to assault or harm an identifiable group.
00:23:15.460I mean, we only have so many resources to track them down.
00:23:17.460I mean, there are real crimes out there, but, you know, we're spreading this so thin going after anybody and everybody says something online.
00:23:23.460We're going to run out of resources to get the real criminals.
00:23:26.460Yeah, this this builds on the prior bills, Bill C-11 and C-18.
00:23:31.460And it's it's a gradual government takeover of the Internet.
00:23:37.460This this online harms bill, in my view, it's a it's not just a step in the wrong direction.
00:23:43.460It's a great leap in the in the wrong direction.
00:23:46.460And it's going to do more to harm our freedom of expression than the prior bills, C-11 and C-18, which are a little bit more subtle and indirect.
00:23:56.460But they're also a threat to our free expression.
00:23:59.460Well, so this bill has been tabled now.
00:24:02.460There are some people saying, though, I mean, the way the government works and how fast it works is the chances of this bill getting all three readings and then royal assent and through the Senate by the time the next election's held are are pretty slim.
00:24:12.460And we shouldn't have to rely on this thing dying on the order paper.
00:24:16.460But if the government's in a hurry, they can get this thing through fast if they want to. Right.
00:24:20.460Well, you and I have seen this many times, both both provincially and federally.
00:24:24.460When a government is hell bent on getting a certain bill through, they will bang, bang, bang, first reading, second reading, third reading, and they will use their majority to cut off debate.
00:24:37.460They will use their majority to see to it that that there is not a parliamentary hearings, which is normal with with many, many bills.
00:24:46.460You've got an all party committee of MPs that that reflects the composition of the House of Commons and you have witnesses, you have testimony and you have, you know, the way it should be a very thoughtful process with plenty of opportunity for public participation.
00:25:02.460Hopefully the government will allow that.
00:25:05.460But if they choose not to, they could rush this through in in 48 to 72 hours if they wanted to.
00:25:11.460So it's really crucial for people to contact their MP immediately by phone or email, sign the petition and spread the word.
00:25:19.460Yeah, well, and, you know, this sort of thing, I mean, I can already see how they're politically framing it.
00:25:26.460I mean, in putting the anti child porn stuff at the top, as soon as anybody comes out in opposition to this bill, they're going to turn out and say, well, you support the publishing of images of minors online.
00:25:36.460You know, a pornographic images, you how dare you, you vile person.
00:25:40.460But I think the electorate maybe is finally starting to see through this crap, aren't they?
00:25:45.460The other thing that's already criminal is threats and intimidation.
00:25:50.460So part of the part of what they bring forward is we have to we have to prevent nasty people on the Internet from from from bullying children or from encouraging children to to self harm.
00:26:01.460That, too, is already covered by existing laws.
00:26:06.460And the other thing the bill completely forgets about is that that a big part of the solution to children getting harmed online is for parents to ensure that their kids are not glued to a computer screen or an iPhone or a smartphone, whatever.
00:26:20.460It's up to parents to make sure that to protect their children by not giving their children unlimited and unsupervised access to the Internet and social media.
00:26:30.460And that's a huge part of the solution.
00:26:32.460But the government likes to pretend that, you know, parents, parents are not big players.
00:26:37.460So it's up to the government to be the big parent to look after these things when really the first the first part and the major part of the solution to protecting children from online harm lies with the parents.
00:26:50.460I'm not saying we shouldn't also have appropriate criminal code provisions as we do, but the the big thing is for parents to assume responsibility for what their kids are seeing online.
00:27:01.460Yeah, I mean, I don't this is a government that can't even get their own payroll system right.
00:27:06.460I don't want to entrust them with the ability or the the task of raising our children.
00:27:10.460They think that they'll only make a mess of it.
00:27:12.460If anything, they should be empowering parents and encouraging parents to get in more involved in their their their children's, you know, growth and development.
00:27:19.460I mean, it's a tough task and a lot of opinions and that this just gets all the more intrusive.
00:27:24.460And when you take responsibility away from others, it'll probably just make the problem worse.
00:27:31.460Well, I guess before I let you go, so you're doing a petition with the JCCF.
00:27:35.460Are you have you guys I guess you can't really challenge a bill that hasn't even been passed yet.
00:27:39.460But have you got other actions planned aside from that or for now you're advocating kind of and just gathering the steam that hopefully you can shut this down in its tracks.
00:27:48.460But I imagine if the bill goes through, then you'll get to work on other things, too.
00:27:52.460Well, we will be our team of lawyers and paralegals as well as communication staff.
00:27:57.460We will be submitting at least one brief, possibly more to the MPs outlining very specifically why this legislation is harmful and how it unjustifiably violates the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:28:13.460And yes, we are looking at once it's proclaimed into force, we would look for the weakest, the worst provisions, particularly the one about preemptive punishment of people who have committed no crime.
00:28:28.460That is one that we would seriously consider taking to court immediately, even before the harm comes from it.
00:28:39.460Great. Well, I guess before I let you go, then, you know, I know you guys do a lot more.
00:28:44.460You've had a lot of actions over the years and you've done a lot of great things with your organization, with the, you know, standing up for our constitutional freedoms, as is in the name of your organization.
00:28:52.460So where can people find it to take part in the petition or donate?
00:28:57.460I see one of our commenters saying he's a monthly donor for you guys and a lot of people really appreciate your work.
00:29:02.460Well, we do rely entirely on voluntary donations from Canadians and we're a registered charity.
00:31:01.460He's a retired paramedic, fantastic guy.
00:31:04.460And he's really been advocating and lobbying, you know, to try and reform Alberta's paramedic system, because it's a mess.
00:31:11.460You know, we have a lot of stuff going on.
00:31:13.460And as much as Premier Smith has even talked about a lot of solutions, you know, to end the hallway care, to end the wasteful use of ambulances for non-urgent patient transfers and everything.
00:31:23.460It seems like the powers that be are dragging their feet.
00:31:33.460And hopefully, you know, I think part of the problem is the provincial government wants to move on this, but they got their irons in 100 fires.
00:31:49.460I live just outside of Calgary and Prittis and our ambulance is almost never in Prittis because it's always being pulled into Calgary to do Calgarian services.
00:31:58.460And often those are doing non-urgent patient transfers.
00:32:01.460That means the patient isn't in an emergency situation.
00:32:04.460They're moving them from a hospital to a care center or hospital to a hospital.
00:32:08.460And, you know, a lot of these, a lot of these could actually be done in taxis, to be honest, but everybody's so liability averse that, oh, we can't do that.
00:32:15.460What if the person, you know, it's, it gets ill on route, but also we do not need a fully, you know, staffed truck with paramedics tied up for a non-urgent patient transfer, much less stealing them from the rural areas.
00:32:30.460One of the solutions was talking about having other private providers, you know, use ambulances.
00:32:37.460And I mean, different, you know, there's still skilled, trained people for these patient transfers.
00:32:41.460So we can keep the other AHS ambulances on the road for the emergencies, for the car accidents, for the dog maulings and all the other things that they, so important work that they do.
00:32:49.460Yet in 2023, 1178 times rural ambulances were pulled away to do non-urgent patient transfers, which meant we had no ambulance coverage.
00:33:00.460You know, there was no ambulance available because they're in Calgary doing a non-urgent one.
00:33:04.460And these companies, they're, they're very good.
00:33:08.460For whatever reason, their contract was just dropped to do these things.
00:33:13.460And I, I think they've got an announcement coming soon.
00:33:15.460There's one other company they might approve.
00:33:17.460Cause see what they did is say, okay, we'll allow these private providers to come in and do these non, you know, patient transfers and some other services.
00:33:23.460But then they brought in all of these requirements, these ridiculous requirements.
00:33:27.460They have to take part in the dispatch system and all this other junk when it seriously, you can use a cell phone system nowadays to do that, to keep them out of there.
00:33:36.460They're baffling with BS is what they're doing.
00:33:38.460It's pure bureaucratic garbage where they're regulating this out of, out of existence and it's wrong.
00:33:46.460And we're all getting worse service for it.
00:35:08.460You should be at home with your cats cleaning urine instead of out on the streets damaging the property of people doing a democratic exercise.
00:35:17.460That's getting back to what I'm talking about.
00:36:53.460There's this weird document, a piece of paper that Dwayne Bratt found and CTV found it worth reporting on that showed an organizational list.
00:37:01.460It sounds like this group is trying to put together an organization for municipal engagement.
00:37:06.460Maybe the foundation of a municipal party down the road.
00:37:10.460And some of the people's background happened to be with the Take Back Alberta.
00:37:13.460I think Take Back Alberta has thousands of people who could identify as being a part of that group.
00:37:17.460It doesn't mean they're controlled by David Parker or Take Back or Alberta or any of that.
00:37:22.460But the conspiracies, oh dear, the conspiracies.
00:38:15.460I booked him twice and he stood me up twice.
00:38:17.460Actually, I don't think he did it out of malice.
00:38:20.460I think he just did it out of irresponsibility and not knowing how to set an alarm on his phone, whatever.
00:38:25.460I still applaud him for getting this ball rolling and everything.
00:38:28.460But again, if people think this was some conspiratorial effort to have a giant political action going, I would think that whoever headed this thing up would be somebody a little more politically experienced and skilled than the one they have, who's kind of been doing it so far.
00:38:46.460And I don't see that to be the case, you know, if you're going to pull off stunts like that with friendly media outlets.
00:38:53.460But either way, unfortunately, no, I tried speaking with him.
00:39:02.460The other thing, though, one concern that is a little bit valid, and this is one of the things Gondek's been implying that SB Conheritance.
00:39:09.460And she's been talking along the lines of saying, we don't know about the privacy of the people who put their names on those forms.
00:39:17.460Okay, well, the petitioners are not supposed to use any of those signatures, any of that information for anything else but this petition.
00:39:29.460And I've seen some people discussing that online, oh, we should hang on to this so we can use it in the election.
00:39:40.460That would play right into Gondek's hands.
00:39:42.460If the people who signed that petition to recall Gondek suddenly are getting phone calls from a political activist group a month from now, two months from now, you really are going to see some problems.
00:39:52.460Use it only for this, not for data mining.
00:39:55.460You want to data mine, you start an online petition.
00:39:57.460You go knocking door to door and say, this is the purpose of me talking to you.
00:40:02.460I'd like to add you to a database to talk further.
00:40:04.460But this petition can't be used for anything except this recall.
00:40:34.460But she knows enough math to know that a bunch of people are not going to get 100,000 more signatures on an official petition than even voted in the last election.
00:40:42.460Jason Kenney made the recall legislation garbage on purpose.
00:44:37.460It was an indigenous environmental monitor.
00:44:39.460For those who've worked in the oil field, you know, and I hate to say it, but most of these monitors you hire, you're just giving an elder a bunch of money to stand around and feel better about himself so they stay out of your hair while you get the job done.
00:44:49.460Unfortunately, once in a while they feel like getting in there and trying to find something.
00:44:53.460And this one came out and found evidence of a red-tailed hawk and shut down this multi-billion dollar pipeline again.
00:45:00.460This thing's going to, it's just brutal what it's going to cost us by the time it's done.
00:45:06.460And just remember, as this thing's getting up to $40 billion in years past schedule, we could have had this built for $4 billion totally on private funds.
00:45:13.460All Trudeau had to do is get out of the bloody way.